An Orky Story
by Thefallenheart
Summary: Yep, I re did it because, lets face it, it need it it. As before it is a story with an ork in it and as before this is all you are getting for a summary. If you want to know more then you will just have to read it. Yes i know its long.


This massively needed re-make has, I know, has been a long time in the doing and in all fairness I started as soon as I started to received the reviews. But then I discovered youtube and, like most of the people who put the stuff found therein, lost most of the working synapses in one half of my brain and became a gibbering twit. Then I was sent away to help run a camping trip for the local Church and after the youtube withdrawal symptoms had gone away found I could actually think a bit better than when I was watching the same crappy home made junk over and over. The result of all this is what you see as you scroll down the page. The only lingering effect of the youtube overdose is the fact that the Immortal God-Emperor is probably going to end up sounding a bit like Foamy The Squirrel.

The Seemingly Obligatory Disclaimer à Its Based on Warhammer 40,000 but, and I want to make this absolutely clear in every way shape and form, IT IS MY STORY.

All reviews are welcome, suggestions and advice will probably be acted upon unless they are bloody stupid and all flamers will be used for fuel to keep the coal bill down a bit.

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Goolchen was an Ork. This was obvious to any one who has had the misfortune of meeting one of his species. He would stand at about 7'7" if he ever felt inclined to stand upright. But as most of his species is wont to do he is content to let his knuckles rest on the floor. He has the characteristic green skin of his people, the same bucket jaw, pronounced lower fangs and expression of near terminal bad temper. This where his resemblance with the stereotypical Ork ends. His skin is a much lighter green than that of the others of his tribe, he is much quieter in everything that he does and almost unique among his kind he is a thinker and a psychic. A Weird Boy. He had started to think in his youth, as far as he can remember, it had all been due to the finding a rock on the top of a mountain that contained a fossil sea shell. He had been intrigued by this, as far as this is possible for a young ork. How could a shell from the seabed have found it's way to the top of the mountain, and then get its self turned to stone. Returning to the camp as the twin suns of the planet were setting, carrying a wooly antelope-like beast over one shoulder, he could not help noticing that the clan were even louder than normal, even the ones that had there mouth's shut. The clan Boss was saying what sounded, with his mouth full of raw meat that he was chewing noisily, like "Bludy Grez giv me no respkt he dunt, rite truble maker, ev'ryone after my place in da clan but ee wonte get it not wi me so big an strong. All ov em aw'ays plotin gainst me. But im strong. Iz da pale weed starein at me freteninly?" That night Groolchen had the top of his left fang removed by Skrp the Boss punching him in the face for staring in a challenging way. This was quite lenient for orkish punishment, but then Goolchen was a useful ork and that is always awarded a certain amount of leniency. These were some of the happiest days of Groolchens long life, he knew nothing of technology, of other planets, of the nature of the universe or even the possibility of other species that could be considered equal. But that all changed soon enough. It was on the eve of a fine summer morning. 

It had started like any other such day with the sky blue and the forest full of trees all the way from the beach to the slopes of the mountains. The birds were singing and the forest was full off the promise of something to eat for breakfast, hopefully something that would cook well at any rate. When all of a sudden there was a terrible crash as of thunder but there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sound refused to die away. Then as the sound was approaching the point of becoming deafening two objects tore through the sky like giant shiny stone birds. Birds that landed on the beach. With no communication the clan moved for the hunt. There were creatures moving around the shiny birds they would come up to Groolchen's sholder in height but were much weaker in appearance. They were covered in green and brown leafy, fury skin that was like shiny scales on some of them. Many of them carried shiny rock looking things at there waists, but some carried them in there hands and waved them around. The one that appeared to be there clan Boss was the one with the nearly all black fur.

Just as Groolchen looked upon him and tried to listen to its voice that no one else could hear a sudden pain shot through his whole body making him cry out in agony. The rest of the ork tribe fled leaving their stricken tribe member to his fate. It is after all an ork eat ork world out there, literally sometimes.

Groolchen awoke on in an unfamiliar place with a great many bruises on his body. It was all closed in and hard with no way out. A cave? He had been in a cave once and hadn't liked it much. All cold and hard and cramped and damp and dark and nothing in it to eat. He liked the forest floor much better. Even in the winter snow. Feeling around the walls and the roof he realized with mounting concern that the cave was sealed and that he was trapped, although he did start to wonder how he got in. the walls were not normal stone. They were too slippery and dry and cold and they made a strange hollow "thunk" sound when he rapped on them with his large knuckles.

After an amount of time he could not guess at having no reference to guide him. A part of the face of the wall opened up and in walked the strange creature from the beach, the one all in black. From the light of the light of the cave opening Groolchen could see only more caves and two heavy looking creatures apparently made out of… metal. The word arrived into his mind from else where as well of a basic understanding of what it was; clangy, shiny, useful hard stuff. The cave walls were made of it. And then he could hear them clearly the metal creatures out side the cave entrance. Their unheard voice moving much quicker than those of his tribe and much less understandable. But there were some things that he could understand like this metal stuff.

The strange all black creature had no voice. So Goolchen listened harder in that direction, and was rewarded with what can only be called understanding of words.

"Wur um Iy?" He asked. His jaw and throat were not subtle enough to form the sounds he had heard in his mind.

"What are you?" replied the small creature. Staring Groolchen straight in the eyes. This was a direct challenge to Groolchen, and had Groolchen been any other ork he would have torn this pathetic creature into pieces and had him for his lunch.

"Ork."

"How many others are there like you ork?" this was another threat but there was something that was creeping up on his mind that had more to do with metal clad figures standing outside the metal cave door and his survival instinct that told him not to crush this creature just yet. Best just to answer his questions. That and the fact that this was very interesting and he needed something for his brain to do before it got bored and started thinking about stone shells again.

"well, deres me an Grev an Boss Nkret an Gnet an Prop an…"

"I do not want the names of your stupid tribe xeno, how many are like you, a psyker."

"Wot'za siker?"

"A psyker is a being with unusual abilities that are not bound by physical restrictions."

"Wha?"

"Someone who can perform seemingly impossible tasks with the correct use of their mind."

"Wha?"

"Are you stupider than you look heathen xeno. I will try to put this simply; a psyker is a weird person that can do things with their mind. Is that simple enough for you?

"Ye, tanks a lot." Answered Groolchen in a half growl.

"You will address me as Inquisitor Carex, xeno."

"Dat a nice name, my name iz Groolchen, unkwizita."

After about 12 hours of talking to this foul xeno inquisitor Carex returned to his quarters aboard the ship Holy Retribution. So that was what all the psychic disturbance was caused by was it. Unbelievable. Lord Inquisitor Melquinn was not going to believe this. This animal, perched so innocently on a world directly between two civilized imperial worlds, had been disrupting all the astropathic communications. A mere ork. A creature not even graced by the Immortal Emperors blessing was capable of such a thing. It defied reason. Yet there it was. Carex had never met the heathen ork's himself, not being of the odoe xenos, but had read everything about them that he could find before he landed on the world. Ferrell ork's were, he had read, "likened unto savage beasts, they know not mercy, understanding, speech or thought. They are as a poor parody of beasts. Suffer not the cursed ork to live." In every record and report that he had read they seemed to be grotesque savages who delighted in killing everything that moved and feasting on human flesh. They should be barely capable of thought, and certainly not psychic powers. What was more surprising was that this one seemed to be almost polite, even if it had said nothing of real importance. It needed to be studied. True this was not how you dealt with xenos, they were there for killing. But something one of a kind was always fascinating.

Groolchen was not sure when he managed to sleep on the cold metal floor. He was really only aware that he woke up. And he awoke with the knowledge that his mind had accumulated as it wandered around the ship, unseen, unheard but listening to the stray thoughts of the crew. How different the galaxy was to what he knew not so long ago. How much more complex it seemed. He also became painfully aware that the only reason that he was alive was because he was being studied and was no apparent threat. The instant that this changed he would die.

By the time three months had passed Groolchen was a shadow of his former self. His skin had become unhealthily pale and he had wasted away considerably. It was not that his imperial captors were not giving him enough food to survive it was that they were giving him the wrong sort of food. Bread and dried fruit was not the food of the ork. It made him ill. At least they had given him a toilet. But what he craved now was food and thought. And company. He had received no such things, all he had received were beatings. And thoughts of pain. The inquisitor had visited him often but only to test his psychic abilities. And then he had received another sort of beating, he had been thrown bodily across the room and punched and stomped upon as the inquisitor just sat there staring at him with is cold grey eyes. Groolchen knew full well what they were doing. They were testing him to see what threat an ork psyker could be. What they had unintentionally done was teach him. Regrettably this meant so very little as soon he would be dead without medical attention. He could already feel an un-natural chill in his bones. But the only people who got medical attention an imperial ship were members of the Imperium. Not "heathen xenos". But Groolchen was a desperate ork and there are few things more dangerous.

As inquisitor Carex opened the door he was greeted by the foul xeno in his overly polite mocking way. How typical of the ork's, he thought, they only show respect to those who could obviously destroy them. Then the xeno said something that took him entirely by surprise.

"what?" asked the inquisitor, totally taken of guard by the question.

"Can I pleez join da impeerum ov oomanity?" repeated the ork.

"Don't be absurd you are no human!" yelled the inquisitor at such hideous blasphemy.

"Neether are da too big jentleman that are out side da door. Dere minds are all funny an not like da minds of da crew. But space mareens are useful an ave purpus an dey are part of da impeerium."

"The Adeptus Astartes are the emperors chosen warriors. You are an ork. They are created to be the guardians of humanity against things like you."

"Yet you have never seen any fing like me. Dats why I am not dead. If I was not an un presdented fing dat had to be studied den you would have killed me an my tribe on da planet." Replied Groolchen with all the bluntness of an ork that knows it is dead.

"How dare you talk to me like that! You a mere xeno, a savage ork! You will refer to me as inquisitor!" yelled inquisitor Carex. With a massive psychic blast he threw Groolchen across the room. Attempted to throw him across the room. But he just stood there unmoving. His body wasting away and bruised but standing prouder than any space marine. Again a much more brutal attempt to silence the worthless xeno. All that happened was that the adamantine deck plates that he stood on bent slightly.

"I cud be a help to you. I wud be loyul an usefull. I wot to elp but you loked me in a room an try to poison me wi food dat I cant eat an drive me mad wi nothing to do. You try to break me wi beatings and you have da nerve to call me savage. I av shown restraint wi you, ooman, no other of my kind would. Dis is bcos I want to help and learn. All I wont iz to learn. An you ave tought me." With those words the inquisiter hit the opposite wall with a hollow making a hollow 'thung' sound. Groolchen then rose to his full towering height, just as the two space marines leapt through the door and emptied a clip of bolts into him. Not a single one of them made contact with the body of Groolchen. If Groolchen had the mentality of any other ork this would have caused him to go into a berserkers rage and kill every one on the ship. But Groolchen was not any other ork so he just stood there radiating quiet menace.

The inquisitor staggered upright and launched another blast of psychic death at Groolchen that had as much effect as spitting at a tyranid.

"I unly wont to lurn, iz dat so bad."

He had spent the last week in another room. This one had a light source in the roof and a computer terminal. He was also getting some sort of raw meat to eat. It was not particularly nice meat, it was fatty, gristly, tasteless and often frozen solid. Whatever animal it was from Groolchen would not have hunted it. But the knowledge that he had gained far out weighed what he was having to put up with. Groolchen also could not help noticing half a dozen half concealed security devices hidden in the walls. The keys on the pad under the screen were too small for him to push with his big clumsy fingers, but were quite easy to press with his mind. He had never dreamed that such information existed, or that half of it was restricted. The restrictions were easily over come and Groolchen had found something quite remarkable. Technology. And so he had started to learn of the wonders that the tech-priests of mars had spent so long trying to hide from all but themselves.

Inquisitor Carex sat watching the ork through the surveillance devices. This was clearly not a regular ork. This was obvious. A regular ork would not sit still for nearly seven days reading design schematics and breaking security locks with all the patience of a safe cracker. How the xeno had managed this was a mystery, thousands of people thorough out the imperium tried to get into the archives of the tech-priests every day with no success. The creature seemed to be making notes. It had taken one of the bones from its food and had cut a deep gouge in its right shoulder, then written on the walls with its own blood. Most of what it seemed to be writing appeared to resemble the blueprints for an STC (standard template construct) based construct, but it appeared to be none that showed up in any of the documents it had read.

By the eighth day all the walls, floor and the ceiling were completely covered in the meticulously neat scrawl. Inquisitor Carex was going to have to visit the xeno again, if nothing else than to find out what the scrawl on the wall was.

"Hello again ork."

"Ello unkwiziter." Replied Groolchen standing from his seat and turning to meat his captor.

To the inquisitors immense surprise the STC was apparently written in High Gothic, the universal language of the governors of the Imperium. He had expected it to be a badly represented variation on Low Gothic, the highly diverse language of everyone else. Also, it was extremely neat.

"What is this that you are writing on the walls?"

"I saw da armer dat da big oomans was wearin an I was curious why dey was wearin it so I looked for a pikchoor ov it. Den I wonted to now aw it worked and den I wudered aw everywon els could wear it. Dis iz a s-t-c of how to build one for normal sizes oomans. It iz not az good but it iz easier to make, lighter an not az cumbersome an eezier to take on an off. It can also be used az a armured space sooot. Den I ran out ov wall to write on, unkwisiter."

"You did all of that?" asked the inquisitor in total disbelief.

"Ye."

"Can I send someone to write it down?" was all he could think of to say. This ork must be a super genius. Most people could not even understand the language that the STC's were written in, and no one for millennia had extrapolated new ones.

The next day a very strange creature entered his cell. Groolchen was quite use to the presence of humans by now. Whenever a member of the crew drew a short straw and had to deliver his food he always remembered to thank them, not that this made any difference, they still ran out of the room as soon as they handed him the meat. But this creature was strange. It was basically human in shape but was dressed only in rags. It, or rather she, was a bit short for a human, incredibly pale, skinny as a rake, had bright orange eyes and light blue hair that was thick with grime. This was not what was so unusual about her. She had two antennas on the top of her forehead. She was carrying a data slate.

"Are you ere to scribble down wot I wrote?" asked Groolchen.

The response was that the strange human woman flinched as if he'd raised his fists in anger.

"Yes, sir." She said in almost a whisper.

"Are you feelin all rite?" asked Groolchen, probably the first time an ork has ever shown concern for a humans well being.

"Here to transcribe, sir." The strange human answered in the same terrified half whisper.

"Are you scared ov me?" asked Groolchen.

"Yes, sir." There were tears openly streaming down the woman's face now.

"Why?" He asked in the gentlest voice that an ork can manage, which isn't much.

There was no answer only more tears.

"Is it cos I am a ork?"

"Yes, sir." Answered the strange lady.

"Why are you scared of orks, ooman?"

"Because they tell me that you will do terrible things to me, sir." She replied. Then added "sir, I'm not human I'm a mutant."

"Thowt so, I was jus bein polite. You don ave t call me sir you now, only unkwiziters and such need people t baw t dem all da time cos dey are to weak minded t be wi out der titels. My name iz Groolchen. D you ave a name yung lady?" As he said this all the hidden cameras a microphone's stopped working all at once for no apparent reason.

"No." Replied the mutant.

"Why d y not av a name?"

"Because I am a filthy mutant."

"How bawt you give me da data slate an you can spend dis time thinkin a name for y'self. I don't think you are filthy if dat is any elp. Although I could probably do wi a wash. You can av da chair I'v bin sittin in it for too long an mi bums gon num." This at least brought a slight smile to the mutants pale face.

"Where are you from Goolchen?" asked the mutant with no name.

After Groolchen had finished telling the mutant of his life on the planet the humans knew as Far Lost on the fringe of the galactic spiral arm she had said it sounded beautiful. Goolchen had to agree that if you had spent all your life on an Imperial war ship it probably did seem beautiful. Then he asked about her life in the human ship. He listened with mounting horror to her tale of pain and loneliness. Never knowing any member of her tribe, taken from her parents when she was a child and used as a slave on this ship full of people who hated and despised what she was, reaching the age of seventeen and never having had a single friend. That bit had hurt him most of all. Friends were what humans needed to know they were human.

"I wud like to be frends wi you if dat iz any elp." Said Groolchen, tears streaming down his face, after she had finished.

"You want to be friends with a mutant?" She asked.

"Only if you wont to be frends wi an ork."

"Thank you she said." She suddenly rushed forwards and gave him a big hug. "I never knew orks could cry." She said.

"Neether did I." Replied Groolchen trying not to crush her in his massive arms. "I av finishd da ritin. I will rub dis of now, but iv you cud bring an uther data slate tomorrow I wud be very gratefull. I am tryin a da moment to desiyn a method ov getting stuff from a planets surface into space wi out avin to use a ship cos it is not ifishent."

After his work on 'Da Space Platform And Elevator.' He got board and hacked through the innumerable safety checks for the knowledge kept in the archives of the inquisitors. Here he found the books of religion banned by the inquisition. Having read them in order they appeared on his screen he became determined to find one that he agreed with. And he found one. The report was written by an inquisitor in the five hundred and seventy second year of the thirty third millennia. And after much much more searching he finally found what he was searching for under a file simply labeled 'Bible'. And he read in wonderment. How was it that humanity could be brought so low? To what they were and what they are now there seemed to be little to no connection save the most superficial. Beings that committed genocide as a matter of government policy and this, it was hard to keep them in the same thought they were so totally opposite. That a creature could be capable of such horror and had once believed in these words so devotedly, truly humanity was mad. But it was a madness they had won the stars with.

The next day his mutant friend came back under orders to transcribe anything useful that he had written. This carried on for several days. He would write and the mutant would copy, then in the afternoon (as far as he could judge) he would read things deemed heresy by the Inquisition or classified by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Groolchen was fully aware that Inquisitor Carex was monitoring everything that he accessed, but what of it. Eventually by what was probably the fifth day he discovered the files of the Odoe Xenoes and spent fully two minutes finding a way to access them. And this was the time that he first learnt about the orks of other worlds. In those files he saw a hell he never knew could exist. A world of constant war between the numerous empires of his people and the Humans, Tau, Tyranid, Eldar and all the other peoples too numerous and strange to think of. Failing that they would turn on each other like an all-consuming fire that had run out of fuel. It seemed that they had fallen to a place where the mayhem and murder had become as necessary as breathing. Admittedly the humans were not far of either but the fact that they were orks just made it worse. Creatures like him. It was not like he could say they any more 'they' were capable of atrocities and 'they' were capable of horrors, it was not a pleasant thought to think that 'we' were capable of such things. How are they any worse than we are?

After working his way through the entire database of factual information concerning the Eldar (a surprisingly large amount) the Tau (very little) and the Tyranid (nearly nothing, it is not as if they had what you would call a complex society) he began to learn of the fallen Necrontyr and there dark masters the C'tan. After an hour a deep suspicion began to form in his mind. He looked back to the most sacred files of the Adeptus Mechanicus and cross-referenced the two. Then he looked at the report of the incident when the Martian surface had been touched ever so briefly by the pestilence of the Necrons. And then he began to think some disturbing and mind numbing thoughts. Why would the Necrons send five ships to the surface of mars just to be nuked to oblivion what possible purpose could it serve? Not a single shot had been fired by the alien ships, they had merely sped through the Martian defenses and touched the rusty red dead soil. Why? Then he remembered something he had merely glimpsed in the files of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the ravings of a condemned man driven to insanity by a terror so absolute that his death sentence must have seemed like a blessing. He found every thing he could about the last few days of the ex-communicate Adept named Cortswain, the crime of heresy against the Omnissiah that he was accused of and every one of his mad terrified words. Then he realized what had been happening. There was no great slumbering machine-god on mars. There was no Omnissiah and the pathetic false religion of the tech-priests had been built around a galactic sized lie. Under the surface of mars, beneath the sacred tunnels of the labyrinth of the tech-priests, in the very shadow of Holy Terra itself, a C'tan was slowly beginning to awaken.

The next day the mutant did not return instead another human man came to visit. This one was dressed in much the same way as Inquisitor Carex but had short red hair where as Carex had been bald. His coat had a slightly tattered look about it that showed it to be extremely old but well cared for. He was also a lot thinner. There was something about him that kept putting Groolchen in mind of iron for some reason.

The figure closed the door behind him and placed and unfolded a chair that he had been carrying and sat down.

"Hello Groolchen my name is ex-inquisitor Argentius, though you may just call me Argentius. How have they been treating you?" he had no thoughts, all there was in his mind was the taste of iron.

"Fine, wot do you wont?"

"Would a little small talk hurt, I have spent the last six months in a condemned cell. I would like to know what has been happening."

"Aw da el wud I no wots bin appenin?"

"I believe that I should be torturing you for information if it's any help."

"Jus try it, I dare ya."

"No thanks I'm smarter than that idiot Carex, I think that I will just ask. Why are you looking at restricted information?"

"cos its more intrestin dan da uver stuff."

A slight smile passed the lips of the ex-inquisitor. "Yes I suppose it is. Did you find anything interesting in your searches?" the inquisitor actually seemed genuinely interested.

"Ye lots o stupidity about oomans an I managed to pees together a load o old desine shkimatics o old stuff dat people av forgotten aw t make. Da stuff on da walls at da moment is for terminater armer an aw t make it." A faint spark of curiosity cought hold in Groolchens mind. "Why wur ya in a conemed cell?"

"For suggesting that we send diplomatic representatives to the Eldar craftworlds and the Tau home world. The High Lords of Terra aren't very receptive to new ideas."

"Dats a bit harsh int it?"

"I thought that to."

Suddenly Groolchen was out of his seat a holding the inquisitor against the wall by the throat. "Were is da little mutant woman dat usually visits me?" the words were calm and entirely un aggressive, but when you can kill someone just by clenching your fist then they do not need to be.

"Serving the captain. At an important meeting."

"Well in dat case you wud not mind takin me to visit dem would you?"

"Great plan. How are you going to get to the great hall. With out being seen."

"I can probably look ooman t uther oomans. Not shure aw well it will work on the psykers or the space mareens. An you are goin show me da way." He let Argentius fall to the floor.

There was a celebration going on marking the day of the Emperors 'ascension' to the golden throne. There was much revelry and good cheer and an excessive amount of alcohol being provided for the crew. This just made it easier for Groolchen to walk through the crowds of people, Astartes and human alike, each one of them trained to kill him on sight.

"I'm glad they are going to execute me soon, I don't think I would want to have to explain myself if we get caught."

"Well you sawnd optermistik."

"Can you see her, no, right lets go." Said the ex-inquisitor in record speed.

"Not yet."

"Look I know that you can count and there are a lot of people here-

"four tawsand aproksmatly."

- so what are the chances of finding one sickly looking mutant woman in this crowd?"

"I c'n hear her mind, it is like music in dis kayos?"

"You do realize that we are walking towards the captains table?"

"Jus follow da song. If you are thinking of showin me up I hope you relize I cud eezly kill evrywon in dis room."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

It was then that he saw the young mutant woman. She was carrying an enormous tray of drinks to the head table where there was sat a great many of the large space marines, out of their power armor for this time of celebration. One of them turned and caught the tray of drinks with his elbow sending it clattering to the ground. Obviously not pleased at this one of them brought his hand back catching her in the side of the head. To be struck in the face by a Space Marine is very painful, as they are always very large and well muscled. What made this worse was that that this particular Astartes had lost his arm at some point in his life and had it replaced by a synthetic bionic hard cold replacement. The blow left a very big bloody mark on the side of her forehead and completely severed her right antenna. The mutant fell to the deck unconscious. As the sadistic space marine brought his arm back for another blow he suddenly realized that he could not in fact move his arm. He looked and saw that there was a large man standing behind him holding his arm in a grip stronger than iron. What was most noticeable was that the hand that was holding him back was about 14" from his arm.

Then the Glamour that Groolchen had been projecting suddenly collapsed and it became apparent to everyone in the room that there was an ork amongst them. This caused a lot of things to happen in very quick succession. The first was that in one graceful movement Groolchen, with one hand, tore off the Space Marines' bionic arm and smashed it over his head and with the other hand gently picked up his stricken friend. At about this time the most of the ships crew realized that they had left their shot guns at their work stations and those that hadn't, along with the space marines that never go anywhere without at least one weapon, fired at him. Every single shot of lead, depleated uranium and steal and every single bolter round slowed and stopped at about the average ork arm length as if the air had become too viscous to allow them to pass. There was a clatter as they fell to the floor, harmless. After about two minutes of this it became apparent that it was not going to work. As soon as the space marines realized this they attempted to tackle the three opposing figures in basic combat.

_But now the beast was free. They had hurt his friend, these pathetic, worthless meat sacks. These stupid, small-minded creatures who could only think about duty. These creatures who had never once had a thought that showed even the barest spark of originality. They had hurt his friend, they had dared to harm her. A pure soul who had done nothing in her life to harm another, one who had endured their ridicule and torment with out so much as a single moment of hate. They would burn for this, they would burn, burn, burn._

Like an angel that had not liked what it has seen, he danced through the mess of the Astartes. They were falling like rain drops, they would all fall before him. They thought themselves so strong in there towers of arrogance. But here they where more than a hundred of the Emperors chosen warriors and they were yet to land a single blow on him. In all this time he had not dropped the nameless mutant. The last one fell with two broken legs and a shattered jawbone. And the beast was dragged back into the shadows of the soul.

"Now den Argentius, I tink dat we shud be leevin dis sespit ov a ship very, very soon."

"I could show you where the nearest shuttle bay is, but that will jus get us killed now wouldn't it."

"Say again?"

"Were in the warp, I'm sure that you that you have read about it, and we're about half way between Ultramar and Cadia in any case. If we go outside the Gellar field we would become pray to every warp predator that sees us."

"Wot you wurid bout you wer gunna be executed."

"I suppose, this way."

After about ten minuets of walking around a seeming labyrinth of identical looking tunnels. Groolchen was beginning to suspect that they were lost. He said as much to the ex-inquisitor.

"Well if you want to go on your own your more than welcome to." Was the only reply that the ork would receive.

After another half-hour Groolchen was defiantly believing that they were lost.

"You shoor dat wer not lost?"

"Urm, reasonably sure, yes."

"Naw ders a confidense inspiring remark an no mistake. Aw big iz dis ship?"

"About three kilometres long."

After a further twenty minuets they stopped in front of a very large, heavy looking door with the words:

'DANGER!'

'DO NOT OPEN WHEN THE RED LIGHT SHOWS!'

Written in twelve different languages in heavy red letters and runes. They were in look a green light indicated that there was a ship on the other side of the airlock.

The first feeling the mutant felt upon awakening was that of deep pain all across one side of her head, the first sound that the mutant first heard when she awakened was the sound of argument.

"Wot you mean you carnt fly da ship?" The ork shouted.

"What gave you the idea that I could? I never said that I could." Replied the inquisitor calmly.

"You cud ave sed dat you cudent before." It was intensely obvious that Groolchen was more than a bit annoyed.

"You didn't ask."

"Wot did you tink we wer goin to da ship for? Avin a piknik on?"

"Its probably just as well I was condemned because were about to leave the Gellar field."

"What is a Gellar field?" asked the nameless mutant .

"Well, my dear, it is the only thing that stops the Creatures of the warp from killing the people on ships that travel through the warp. If you would care to look out of your window to the left you will see what looks like the offspring of a squid and a cockroach covered in barbs. That is what this idiot ork is going to get us eaten by if we cant figure out how to fly this ship."

"O' blame evry tin on me den. Yo dint av any better ideas to get of da ship."

"We wouldn't have needed to if you would have stayed in your cell."

This was not an argument that held much malice. It is a strange fact that if faced with imminent death with no hope of salvation that the brains of humans and most human-like species will automatically start to think of something else. This is not for the unreachable prospect of salvation but rather a defence mechanism built into the brain to prevent it being driven mad. The stupid pointless arguments of the inhabitants of spacecraft lost in the warp is a perfect example. Not that many people know this because the chances of rescue in the warp to tell of this observation are about the same as finding a tech-priest that has taken up farming.

The ship had clearly left the protective reaches of the Geller field now and the great beast was stirring. But it was not striking. Its great head turning towards the little ship and with a mouth big enough to swallow the ship whole and barely notice, it smiled. As the warp beast smiled it began to fade as if it was becoming a swirling mist, the smile remaining for a brief time in a manner reminiscent of a Cheshire cat from ancient fable. As the mist began to swirl and coil it funnelled down into the ship streaming through the solid mater of the walls and floor as if they were as real as a shadow, which in this twisted place they may well of been. The mist eventually settled into a vaguely humanoid shape about four foot high and of slight build. It had scales and large eyes and looked for all the world like a walking biped lizard made of silver mist.

**"Your mind, we hear it, not like the others, the fallen Krork."** Spoke the shape

_…the others all fallen, their minds like fire…_

_…falling and fallen this far we have fallen…_

_…the void, so cold where once we were warm…_

There was a strange sound echoing after the words as of a multitude of voices all whispering at once.

"What are you?" asked the ork.

"No name, no reason to be named, no others to name us. So lonely. Now more lonely still."

_…the oldest, the first…_

_…the smartest, the wisest…_

_…the furthest to fall…_

_…you should have seen us, the world builders, the life starters…_

_…we were here and we were great…_

"Who are you."

**"An echo cast out. They burned us and broke us and hunted us down. But here we will wait for them. We will go to our rest once they are dead.**

_…we wait for them in their dreams, our touch is poison to them…_

_…we long for rest…_

_…for the Angel of Death…_

_…deceiver and night bringer, machine god and trickster…_

_…we hear the dieing screams of our friends, their lives snatched away…_

There was only one species with names like that. It did not take a huge leap of the imagination.

"You wait for da C'tan?" at these words the gentle whispers became a torrent of inhuman screams of rage and hate and deep, deep sorrow. But the figure stayed still amidst the screams of the infernal howling that had the other three occupants holding their hands over their ears.

**"Yes, the world killers. They hunted us down and butchered us. They fed upon whole worlds, and when the galaxy had insufficient life they fell on each other like the monsters they are. Then they slept.**

_…so long they slept, so long…_

_…now they awaken…_

_…we will have vengeance…_

_…fear the Red Harvest, they reap your death…_

_…we can not have justice, there is no justification for what they have done, but we will have vengeance…_

_…the ghost of the Old Ones, the ghost's in the warp…_

It is recorded in the book "Dawn of Peace" that the remainder of the journey to the Sol system was remarkably un-eventful, but uncannily fast taking a mere nine hours. About the only thing of any interest that happened was that the mutant woman chose a name. She chose the name Kiyla for the simple reason that she liked the sound of it.

The Martian surface hung against the black of space, a circle of rust red against the empty void. It was also perceptibly getting closer quite quickly.

"Dunt dis ting ave brakes?" Asked Groolchen as it became all to clear that they were heading directly for the red planet.

"We are breaking. If we break any more the momentum will crush this ship like an egg. Not something that you want to happen in the dark of space."

"Cant we just change direction and miss it?" The ork and the human were silenced. Then they exchanged the sort of look that shows both people are searching for an excuse why they hadn't thought of this before. Then both of them started to argue. Then reach for the big leavers that controlled directional thrust.

"Dat wos smart." Said the ork as the ship settled into an extremely far out and slow orbit. A rare smile touched the face of the mutant. Kiyla had been lying down or sitting still and holding on to the wall, for the entire trip. This was because the severed antennae had totally ruined her sense of balance, she had tried to stand up as soon as she had awoken and had slowly toppled sideways.

"Thank you, sir." The habits of a lifetime do not fade fast and she had called every one 'sir' for as long as she could remember. It would take some considerable time for this unfortunate habit to fade.

"So, how are you going to get down to the planet surface?" Asked the inquisitor after about half an hour of staring out of the window and admiring the view, such as it was.

"Well, I figer dat I can use da warp to jus step inta won of dem big forge buildins an den use an ilooshun ta walk t da masheen god and den break is nek, or sum fin."

"You sure that you don't want to think about this first?" Asked the fallen inquisitor.

"Gud greef no, if I eva thought abawt wot I wos gunna do nex I wud still be at home in da forest, an probably a bit appyer for it. If dis all gows rong wait until evrywon carms dawn an find sum were quiet to land. After dat your on our own. Bye." And with a wave the ork vanished.

A journey through the warp can be nerve-racking at the best of times even when in a ship with a working Gellar field. Dropping through the warp in nothing but a pair of shorts is mind-bogglingly dangerous. With out the Gellar field there is no way of shielding your self from not only the creatures of the warp but also the smallest of warp micro-storms. Its hard enough to ensure that the traveller lands in one piece, the same shape, occupying the correct number of dimensions in the right order, not leaving the warp a thousand years after they set of, alive and sane in the best of circumstances; trying to do what Groolchen just did is just possibly the stupidest thing any one could do that does not involve a chainsword and alcohol. Considering the scope of possible accidents, mishaps and screw-ups that could have occurred it was almost a disappointment when he landed fifteen feet above the floor of a subterranean warehouse ten miles from the northern entrance to the ancient labyrinth of mars.

Groolchen had only seen pict-files of forge-worlds onboard the ship he had been captive on. But this was something else entirely. The sound was immense. As he stepped out of the big main doors of the warehouse into one of the industrial factory complexes he thought he was going to go deaf from the noise, it was almost a solid force. Groolchen was unsure but it looked like this factory was for making the pumps for the coolant for the plasma reactors on Imperial ships. It was fascinating to watch. The machines were running by themselves and looked like they had been doing so for such a long time and gave the impression that they would carry on doing so for a long time still to come. This just said it all really about the current state of human technological regression. Groolchen had read about the Empires early history in the restricted and heretical texts that the inquisition had amassed. They were quite informative, especially the Journal of Keeper Cripias. It was essential that the C'tan should die. If it was not to happen then a conflict would arise between Terra and Mars and all the worlds of humanity that would make the Age of Strife look like a tavern brawl. It was an inevitability really when you looked at the two opposing systems from the outside; two hugely powerful quisi-religious organisations that were only connected in the broadest possible sense, one controlled by a collection of evil, scheming, manipulative, ambition driven, arrogant tyrants and the other controlled by a being that is best described as a mass-murdering megalomaniac with no ethics or morality and not a shred of decency. Which ever would eventually win would be irrelevant because everyone else would lose.

The only people in that could be seen in the whole factory complex were the half machine servitors whose entire lives were dictated from cradle to grave by the needs of the automatons they were ordered to maintain. Groolchen was not aware of how the artificially altered eyeballs would respond to the glamour that he was casting and so decided not to push his luck. Feeling the minds of the servitors he found the mental equivalent of porridge; the same tasks performed over and over again without variation and with all thought of their original meanings and purpose lost. Groolchen realised that the glamour probably wouldn't have made a difference in any case. They had done the same tasks for so very long, their bodies gradually replaced by metal as it decayed with age, that they no longer thought it possible that the something might change. They were all but sleeping on their feet.

Through all of this hellish place even in the rock beneath his feet he could feel the presence of the things the Adeptus Mechanicus referred to as the Great Omnissiah. What ever it was, it had a very powerful mind. And this was the thing he was supposed to kill.

One thing still bugged at him. It was the horrible feeling of seeing a picture hung crooked and being unable to right it. This was not how the C'tan worked. Groolchen had read everything the Imperium had on the C'tan. A depressingly small amount; it wasn't that they hardly ever met, it was that the Imperium usually suffered such huge casualties that there wasn't enough people left to get an account of how the bigger picture looked. Most of them were a bit unhinged as well. What the C'tan seemed to do as soon as they awoke was eat the people who woke them and usually everyone else on the planet. Then they got down to some serious scheming, then the set about what they believed to be a truly original plan of crippling the nearest empire and getting the survivors to worship it. But that had not happened here. It didn't even seem to have killed the people who woke it. It didn't seem to have tried to take over the nearest empire (maybe because at the time there was a huge warp storm isolating the sol system). It had simply thought its faithful servants to build really substandard but cost effective crude weaponry and other high-tech systems.

After about half an hour of thinking about this Groolchen realized what this monster had done. It had stunted human technological growth for the last 15,000 years. It was a wonderful, flawless plan. The perfect conspiracy as no human could possibly live long enough to see any of its slow gradual moves take place. The tech-priests basically had all the patents for any piece of technology more advanced than the tinderbox. As a result they had absolute power over any industrial, forge, hive, agri or civilized world and research outpost. This in turn made people respect them. To ensure this continued respect and the power it entailed they made technology totally incomprehensible through many pointless rituals and ceremonies and teaching and talking about technology with their obscure language; Lingua-Technis, only they used it only they understood it and anyone else caught doing either got shot. The idea of technology fell into the realms of supposition. And eventually magic. From this sorry state of affairs the C'tan ruled as a god of all humanity. Any new technology that was developed was declared heresy and the inventor was shot. All humanity could now remember was the golden age of technology and long for that time before the harsh and brutal rule of iron men and a monster in the shadows. Over time this state of perpetual ignorance resulted in technology being gradually lost and forgotten and humanity would slide into a series of unconnected squabbling little empires, just right for the Red Harvest.

The entrance to the labyrinth was, in the end, extremely easy to find. All you had to do was follow the sick feeling of the machine gods twisted mind; it pounded like an external headache. The entrance appeared to be guarded. Two figures in rust red robes with deep hoods bared the way. Each was holding what looked very much like a plasma cannon and both had tendrils sprouting from their backs that looked very much like they ended in knives. With a slight adjustment to his illusion Groolchen altered his appearance to resemble theirs.

This worked for about five seconds and that was only because it took both of them that long to realize that both of them were actually seeing the same thing. An ork on mars. Apparently the glamour did not work on augmented eyes of the tech-priests. The first shot bet around Groolchen like smoke in the wind blown against a bubble of calm air. The second did the same as did the following two-dozen, both were silenced when their heads connected with the doorframe making an almost bell like sound. Into the darkness the ork strode. It was obvious why no one was permitted access: on every wall were carvings of every STC ever designed, every piece of technology ever designed an recorded in the whole of the Imperium. There were even data slates built into the very walls.

Apparently the machine god was planning to use this technology to totally steel the empire from the Emperor. Row upon row of the precious data as far as the eye can around every twisting turn it was there in an almost never ending supply. The twists and turns of the maze soon became meaningless once it was realized that there were signs written all over the walls in Lingua-Technis. The idea was that any one who was not meat to read it would probably not even reach the surface of the red planet and only tech-priests were supposed to be able to read it. In short it was a security system thought up by an idiot.

The time-stream was stirring again around the area of humanity, of all things. The Eldar have always possessed some ability to foresee events, and this one was big. Many events are of such a magnitude that they cast their shadows before them but usually they appear gradually and build up to their furthest height. This one had appeared almost over night and already its shadow was so deep as to be almost solid. Not so much a sinister deep shadow but just a very big one. There had been such time shadows before and the most recent dozen had been very bad, very bad indeed.

The Farseer who was observing these events was, currently, the most perceptive of the entire profession. He could chart the course of future events with such accuracy that more than four thousand different runes had to be cast to keep track of the weaving tangle of possible non-definite temporally un-stuck events (their is no better translation). His most important achievement of recent times was, he felt, in alerting the inhabitants of Craftworld Iyanden to the threat of the Great Devourer (not to be mistaken with 'She Who Thirsts', the worst the Great Devourer can do is kill you) decades before it had even entered the galaxy. Just over a fifth of the population had survived, a fifth more than otherwise would have.

He really hoped his old students, now about half the seers on the craftworld of Ulthwe, were paying close attention to this new shadow. If nothing else it was the perfect example that not all such phenomenon were evil portent. It was a sad fact that the Eldar of today had been born on the receiving end of so many bad omens and depressions in the time-stream. This would probably be the first one of such magnitude and potential beneficence, in fact, since the humans went mad and descended to the level of mon-keigh (using the collective past tense to indicate the actual now thought to be extinct species that the humans fell to the level of; as opposed to present tense which is indicative of insult, referring the said people as being evil-minded, vicious, ugly, stupid or sadists). Ulthwe had been put on high alert as soon as it had arisen yesterday and every one was preparing for the worst. Just because a shadow didn't feel evil does not mean it won't accidentally harm you. After far too long with the unfortunate events the Eldar were becoming impressively suspicious of any unexpected change.

The shadow was definitely familiar to the Farseer. Which was absurd, you could not have a familiar future event for the simple reason that it was a **future** event and had not happened yet. But here it was, like the second performance of some long ago heard music. The direction of the shadow was that of some where between the Eye of Terror (our fallen home/the curséd place where once our empire was/the damned lands/physical manifestation of our past sins and wickedness/warp-real space interface/[biggest mistake/waking realm of She Who Thirsts) and the main bulk of the spiral arm that lay between it and the galactic core. It was hard to tell distance with such reckoning but this Farseer was the best and knew it, not as a boast of pride or vanity but as a simple fact. He was willing to bet his Staff of Ulthamar that this shadow emanated from a point just anti-spinward of that general area.

It was nearly fifteen minuets before a star chart of that area was found among the clutter of his own personal observation tower. Next came the hasty search for a tin of pins, which were found by the universally accepted method of accidentally standing on one to find that the tin lid has fallen off. The chat was placed on the large but overflowing table and several pins were place on it at key locations such as the position of the other craftworlds, the Eye of Terror, the possible location of three of the four Yngir (in context meaning the species Yngir not the individual one of then they call Yngir[also known as the He Who Deceivesthe context indicates for sinister and often deadly reasons who is considered the most despicable example and a walking, talking, living example of why extinction is too good for the lot of them) and anything else that might cause variation in the apparent direction of future event. Eventually the source of the shadow was found. Earth, Holy Terra as the inhabitants had recently started calling it; the birth world of humankind. It hit like a revelation, the size, power and familiarity of the shadow. The Emperor was awakening from his coma. All of the eldar believed him to be dead (in this instance meaning 'task left undone but taken past She Who Thirsts to the realm of our distant ancestors [usually meaning those from before The Fall), killed by his semi-clone-child Horus the traitor. It was believed that his body was simply sustained by that gold-plated life support machine they had him strapped to but he was still basically dead.

"My son is alive." Whispered Eldrad Ulthran to the universe in general, the first thing he had said in nearly fifty years.

The air in the tomb was as dusty and dry as the rest of the lifeless planet. Why humans had built any permanent settlement on it was still a complete mystery to Groolchen. Especially when considering what was in front of him. In appearance it was basically a box, ten feet long and five feet wide with a heavy lid for the top face. In appearance it looked to be made out of polished adamantine with strange complex glyphs or runes set into it in unimaginative geometric patterns. That was fine by Groolchan it can be as uninteresting as it wants to be, his eyes hurting when he tried to look at the damn things to hard, now that was worrying. Also the box was intimidating him, or at least trying to. If he had been born a human this would have been very bad; the waves upon waves of malevolence and hate cause even a space marine chapter master to turn and run. The reason why he was not doing so was because the words "abject terror" to the average ork are just a collection of syllables. The effect it had on orks was as a threat and a challenge. The occupant of this box was going to receive a sever pummelling if it didn't apologise very soon. After about thirty minutes of examining the Sarcophagus it became clear that there was no secret switch on the outside to remove the lid. The only viable option left was the one that Groolchen took. After the dust and bits of lid had settled there was an unexpected abundance of nothing happening. Then a shape arose from the wreckage. It was nearly nine feet tall, it was slim and well muscled and was the colour of polished steal.

"Is this how I am forgotten, a lonesome krork as my only worshiper." The monster spoke in words like hollow thunder. "Hardly right for a god to awaken into this disappointment. But still I think I will feed now." The monstrous creature strode towards the ork with hunger in it cold eyes and murder in its black heart.

This is about where the world became an unexpectedly difficult place for the C'tan as it was at this point that Groolchen punched it in the face with knuckles like a bag of big green walnuts. This is almost written into the brain of any ork 'when in doubt punch something'. The creature staggered back an expression on its face more of shock and anger than pain.

"You would dare strike at your god-"

"I dare a lot o fings and you arnt a god, you jus sum creetchr dat shud av diyd so long ago. You shud hav stayd a parasiyt of stars." Solid green fists connected with the monsters stomach and face with a sound like raw steak hitting a wall. Then the c'tan fought back and left burning claw marks burned and torn across Groolchens chest.

_In a place as far away as the thickness of a shadow they cluster as vultures to the dying. Unheard, unseen but definitely real._

The ork was thrown across the sepulchre like a body hurled from wreckage, and found a C'tan pinning him to the floor by his throat. C'tan may be strong but they follow the laws of matter as any other thing will. No matter how strong they are, no matter how vicious and malignant they may be to the rest of creation they still only have the mass and weight that their physical bodies posses, and an ork is not to be underestimated in terms of brute strength. One of Groolchen's flailing arms reached out and caught a triangular piece of sarcophagus lid and jammed it into the machine god's right eye socket.

_In a realm of a nightmare and chaos they circle. In a prison of countless millennia they watch, their prey in sight. How they strain at their chains and hunger for their long denied vengeance. They have found their nemesis, and now they circle for the kill._

The unholy creature flung its self back and clawed the unpleasantly angular ceramite chunk out of its head. To Groolchen's disappointment the ragged wound closed over and healed with horrible speed. But not before the ork caught it on the side of the head with one massive 180° swing of his shovel-sized claw like fists with oblivion at the other end. When the fist collided with the polished head it made a surprisingly metallic sound like an iron bar innocently landing on a railway and just as dangerous.

By now there was no thoughts left to be thought. C'tan and ork could only attack, totally oblivious to the wound both were receiving, intent only on the kill. Living Metal was tarnished and dented and flesh was torn and bruised. Fist and claw moved with unnatural speed as reality itself was warped and twisted to obtain advantage. Amidst this bloody dance of death a thought slid slowly into the adrenalin soaked orkish brain. Ducking a swipe that would easily have decapitated even a massive ogryn Groolchen jumped back, every bone in his body screaming in protest. Believing this to be a retreat the machine god lunged at the ork.

_For the first time in what seemed an eternity the warp ghosts felt hope. _

The attack struck true and the machine gods clawed right hand was thrust deep into the ork's barrel sized chest breaking thick orkish ribs and tearing a hole in Groolchens lungs, leaving a massive ragged wound. But suddenly Groolchen was hold of his wrists in a grip designed by nature to crush bones. Spiting a bloody gob of saliva in the machine gods burning eyes he dropped his adversary bodily into the warp.

_Their prey amongst them, the ghosts of the old ones descend on the terrified C'tan, like sharks that have just smelt the rich intoxicating scent of fresh delicious blood. The machine god died amidst the sound of his own screams echoed across the warp. Torn to pieces by his victims._

On a throne of gold, under a shroud of dust the Emperor of humanity sits, his body withered and dead, slumped against the dusty gilt. For ten thousand years he lain in limbo suspended in the twilight realm of mortality. In the far of days of the Great Crusade he could have healed himself of even these hideous wounds in a matter of days if not hours. It would be as nothing to simply knit his body back together. But that would take a level of concentration he could no longer afford. From the throne he could see so very far and was painfully aware of what dwelt under the surface of mars. The wounds that Horus had dealt him left him crippled. And all he could do now was try to prevent the abomination from awakening. This and trying to hold back the tide of chaos from possessing his vacant carcass left little time for anything else. He had gone to his rest safe in the knowledge that the High Lords of Terra would follow his original teachings and keep his people safe. Whenever he had a moment he felt he could spare he looked around and issued instructions to the high lords happy in the knowledge that they would be followed. But he wished time and time again that he could simply reach out and help. Of all the things he missed most dearly since assuming this cursed 'life' he missed his family the most. His wife, his parents even his semi-clone-children who became the primarchs of the legions Astartes, irksome and vexing though they were at times. But he would never forgive the traitors for what they did to the human species, not ever.

As the Emperor was reminiscing of his old life a sudden pressure was taken of his mind as the machine god died. His age-old prayers had been answered and he immediately began to rebuild his withered body.

Life as one of the adeptus custodius was ideally suited to the sort of person who can stare at the same wall for days on end with out going totally of their rocker. This was, in point of fact, one of the many tests that had to be passed before you could even be considered for the transformation from a man to a Guard of the Immortal Emperor. They were the best fighters of the Imperium for the simple reason that they spent eternity training and were to marines what marines were to humans. They are the shield of the Emperor against the blade of the rebel, the mutant and the alien all of which were well known to attempt deicide at every moment of perceived weakness. The other guards that fought along side these magnificent defenders of a god made incarnate were the more shadowy organisation that dressed in unadorned anonymous plain black power armour and seemed to be shadow given form. These are the Sisters of Silence who move unseen and invisible to the deamon, the witch and all other manner of warp spawned blasphemy. It is such as these glorious warriors who are entrusted with the everlasting task of protecting the splendour of the holy body of the Emperor until he rises again to re-forge the galaxy into an empire that will last for all eternity where humanity is the undisputed master of all creation.

The purpose of guarding the throne is to guard the inside from the outside not the outside from the inside. This is why it took so long for the two guards who had the honour of guarding the door to the throne room itself to respond to the sound of coughing and shuffling coming from within. Several seconds later there was the sound that sounded like someone falling down the stairs of the raised dais the throne was on. Then more shuffling, footsteps getting closer. Eventually it was Sister Diyela of the Sisters of Silence who looked around the corner and became the first person in ten millennia to look upon the face of the Never Dying Emperor. By this time he was only four yards away from the door, slow though he was he was still quicker than original thoughts occurring in the stale minds of the custoedius.

What Sister Diyela saw when she cautiously peered around the doorframe to the Holy Throne Room was not the mighty giant of ancient legend who strode across the galaxy laying waste to all that dared oppose him standing taller than any space marine. What she saw was someone who was of average build and average height and looked as if they had died and been stored in a cold dry place for a very long time. It might put you in mind of grey beef jerky. But this close she could see his piercing ice blue eyes that shone like the aurora borealis. Eyes you could get lost in and drift to sleep. She was already dreaming before she hit the ancient threadbare carpet. The ancient space marine who had resisted temptation to look was next to fall into the deep slumber of the enchanted.

After about an hour of looking for the exit the Emperor had to admit that he was more than lost. He was lost after five minuets so, he reasoned, there had to be another word for what he was now. He had never spent much time in this retched place, this so called palace. His living space had originally been three small rooms some where on the fifty-eighth floor over looking the southern garden. He had chosen that room for the simple reason that it was right next door to his office. The reasoning was that the sooner he got there the sooner he could leave and go to the pub and play some pool. It would be quite easy to chart the Emperors progress simply by the sleeping guards he left in his wake. Three had so far tried to shoot him only to find their weapons fall to pieces in their hands. This had not concerned them much because it's hard to be nervous and unconscious at the same time.

Pool, now there was something to look forward to, and eating and drinking again of course. The simple pleasures of the flesh were going to be so much more pleasing now that he actually had some flesh again. Not that they would serve him or even let him on the premises in his current state. It was probably a fifty/fifty chance weather they would call the hospital or the morgue. One thing he would not miss was the administrative duty of running the bloody empire. If it was possible to find anyone that he could trust completely he would quite happily give them the empire and have done with it. But trust was something he wasn't capable of anymore. Now he knew he was definitely lost, he had never been in any part of the palace that looked like this. On the bright side this appeared to be a lift. It was some time later that he hit the bottom of the lift shaft. Ten millennia of linguistic drift had made the "out of order" sign incomprehensible gibberish.

Thankfully there was nowhere else to fall down to. The lift was at ground floor and he was lying in the lift beneath an Emperor shaped hole in the roof. Another stroke of luck was that the open door was facing the Eternity Gate. The oversized front door his first public relations officer had had commissioned. People had always clamed that he had been overcompensating for something. Something's never change and one of them is human humour. The doors had been extensively repaired after Horus and Perturabo smashed them with siege weapons but at least he knew where he was now. He couldn't remember the door builders name now, it had been Smith or Jones or one of them sorts of names. Coughing up lots of dust the Emperor got unsteadily back to his feet. His knees seemed to be loosening up a bit and he was capable of small steps as opposed to zombie-like shuffles. It had taken nearly twenty-six hours to get to the ancient doors from his throne and after all this they were locked. There comes a point when even the most mild mannered crack. This point had just been reached.

There were suddenly a great many alarms sounding and his head was already feeling numb from the pain. Every bone and joint in his beaten body was cueing to complain. Through the depths of a dead world a lonely ork wanders sure of his imminent death. To an ork the Grim Reaper holds no fear. It is not that they don't have a sense of mortality it is that they are sure it is not the end. This was what the humans could never understand and would never find out about or believe. Nearly every ork has a built in knowledge, a rock hard certainty that heaven exists, making death merely an unpleasantness.

Thinking about this Groolchen realised that the first step on the current path to orkish damnation had been the belief that you could fight your way in. That had not been what he had done or at least not intended to do.

Through a cold labyrinth the ork walked dying and the ancient orkisk prayer of death rose from the pit of genetic memory:

As a krork falls from the living space,

And lands in the far-off judging place,

To seek redemption for wrongs committed,

And find the way to be admitted.

They used to call him krork's best friend,

Now they seek him without end,

Everything that krork's dearly hold,

He holds in a heart now barren and cold.

But he is a caring being still,

And weeps for those who life does kill,

Can you now see hope some more?

Death is not something to abhor.

Do not feel so lonesome still,

Fore Death can never truly kill,

He now seeks to help you sleep,

So your soul will never weep.

This was the only prayer any ork knew. It was built into their very genetic structure; it dates back to before the fall of the krork and their decent to the ork. It is the only thing they hold sacred and never talk about even amongst their own kind, it is precious to them.

The alarms were defining, like a fanfare applauding his last kill. The tunnel he was following would lead him out. Strange that. His feet seemed to want to die beneath open sky. But there was no open sky, just too thin atmosphere above sealed up caves. No final wish granted. No warming sunlight. The tunnel was getting darker and Groolchen was feeling colder as the blood left a trail of slightly richer red in the dry sterile dust. He knew he would not make it to the end of the tunnel. His blood was seeping out at an amazing rate from the dozens of wounds he had received, especially the gaping hole in his chest. But he was going to get to the end of the tunnel that was for sure. There was no way he was going to be beaten by rock, distance and blood loss, not after he had killed the Great Omnissiah. Without even realizing it he had fallen over and could not get up. The end of the tunnel was less than a yard away and he could not get up. Now that was just so bloody unfair. But fair seemed irrelevant now. The pain was fading away as was the cold. If this is what it was like to die it didn't seem half bad.

There was the soft thud of boots on thick dust, was this the Angel of Death? Perhaps he would help him to the end of the tunnel, which would be nice. But nice was irrelevant and possibly incomprehensible to the Grim Reaper not out of cruelness but because, well, it was immortal by definition and so alien that it made orks and eldar seem like brothers.

There was more than one set of boots heading this way. Did he have assistants? Now there was a thought born of delirious blood loss. Not so much blood loss that he could not feel the boots giving him a good kicking.

These were not angels these were tech-priests and you would have to go a long days walk to find someone less angelic. They seemed unhappy about something. That brought a slight smile to the orks face (slightly worried for being in such unfamiliar territory), which was removed when a boot connected with what was left of his teeth. What was the worst they could do? Kill him?

"What should I do with this _thing_, kill it?"

"No, not here, lets make it somewhere more public, lets let everyone watch."

This was lost on Groolchen as he had already passed out. His last thoughts being of his friends in a stolen ship and his tribe on a distant planet.

The doors opened as if a great pair of hands had been pushed between them and forcefully parted. The sound the thousand foot doors made in protest was horrendous. And the silence it left was deafening. The colossal courtyard outside was thronged with people and in front of the now damaged doors was a very large ugly woman with an axe and with a bound and very badly beaten ork. One of the weird pale ones you sometimes find wandering around the Segmentum Tempestus, if he was not mistaken. It did not take a huge amount of brainpower to figure out what was going on. As the Emperors mind wandered the crowd picking up the stray thoughts and dreams he began to get an image of the Imperium he had awoken to. Well that was more than twenty millennia of careful work wasted. Some one was going to pay dearly for this, and he certainly knew twelve people who were at least partly responsible. In the assembled multitude he found a mind that smelled like it belonged to someone that could be useful. This person found himself being dragged with unseen hands by his collar towards the apparition before the ruins of the Eternity Gate, now moving against the tide of people trying to get away.

Inquisitor Shodwik currently of no particular ordo was extremely skilled in his chosen profession. He had served often in the place that he grew up in, the hive city capital of Necromunda. This is why, as he was being dragged towards what looked like a very dry pelage-zombie, he drew his las-pistol and tried to fire as an instinctive action. The only noticeable effect this had was that the antique weapon fell to piece as soon as the trigger was pulled. He had a monomolecular sabre his side that could quite easily cut straight through human flesh with no trouble at all. He was almost going to use it when a primitive part of his brain informed him that it would be the sort of mistake could cherish for the rest of his extremely truncated life and thought better of it.

"Try that again. And I'll flay you. Now go assemble. The High Lords of Terra." The figure was having interrupt his speech to wheeze like some one with a terminal lung infection. With every word a small cloud of dust was exhaled as it was dispelled from his lungs and windpipe. "Go now or you will regret. The day I was born."

The crowd had vanished now save the fleeing inquisitor, and the big ugly lady with the axe who hadn't moved a muscle. It is one thing to believe faithfully in a god and quite another to see him kick the door down. Especially when he looks like a withered corpse. Looking into the recumbent ork's mind he saw something quite unexpected. Most of the strange pale wanderers were more intelligent than other ork's, but so what, so was breadmould. Some of the pale ones were, very rarely, also very weak psykers. True psykers, not the pathetic 'weird boyz' who were only good if they were in a crowd. But this one, was, well, different. The difference is the same as watching a new star appear in the sky and standing on a planet getting flash fried by the nova. But what was most strange, and slightly worrying, was the way it's mind moved, constantly reaching out to feel, experience, understand and learn even as it slept. The behaviour was so totally against the traditional stereotypical orkish behaviour that had he not seen it for himself the Emperor would never have believed it. He looked up at the big ogryn woman; they seemed even uglier than he remembered.

"You grab its arms. And I'll grab its legs. Lets see if we can. Get it patched up."

Some time later, after the ork had been left in a hospital with very strict instructions given to the physicians, the Emperor went for a long walk to loosen up all of his stiff joints. He knew full well that he would have to get his body functional soon before it totally fell into disrepair. After walking a couple more miles he found what he was looking for. An alehouse. The sign above the door proclaimed it to be called 'The Golden Throne'. A slight glimmer of amusement sparkled in the Emperors iridescent blue eyes as he descended the steps to the door.

Upon entering the drinking establishment the sound of eighteen people happily conversing suddenly stopped. The silence that followed was filled with everyone present checking their big heavy earthenware mugs to see if anything extra had been added to their drinks. Then there was the sound of eighteen people silently trying to think of a way to see if everyone else was seeing the same thing. This was difficult without actually admitting to anyone else that you had just seen a dried up old zombie looking thing with weird eyes walk thought the door (the fact that he was still wearing the now grey and frayed robes he was interred in was not much help), no one wanted to admit to what they had seen if they were the only one seeing it. Not if they didn't want everyone else laughing at them for the next month if they were in fact hallucinating.

"Give me a mug. Of you're cheapest. And a bucket." Demanded the Emperor taking a barstool.

The barkeep handed over the bucket that was usually used for catching the drip from the keg where the tap leaked and a mug of the cheapest, nastiest goop that anyone could possibly drink without vomiting.

This was it the Emperor saw. Now or never, this was going to be truly ghastly. To every ones amazement he downed the entire one and a half pint mug by breathing out tipping his head back and pouring the swill down his throat. Then to everyone's disgust coughed it all back up into the bucket. The contents looked like watery cement. Another mug was asked for and the same spectacle was repeated again. The same substance was deposited in the bucket, with the slight exception that this had a slightly yellow tint to it.

With his lungs and stomach now cleared of dust the Emperor was feeling much better. A bag of coins he had pinched from the luckless inquisitor was deposited on the table. The clink they made identified at least some of them as being gold.

"Keep pouring till the coins run out, your usual stuff this time. Get one for yourself as well, what the hell, every can have a drink on me because its not my money." This got a halfhearted cheer. They still weren't sure if he was real yet.

The change that came over the Emperor as he drank was nothing short of miraculous. Most of what he was drinking was water and that which wasn't was composed of various other substances he leach out to replenish his wasted broken body. After every mouthful he became more human looking and less like something from a cheap horror film. But there was something that the beers and ales lacked, then the salted peanuts from the bowl at the bar were devoured along with the next eight replacement packets. Even the obligatory pickled egg jar was raided, much to every ones horrified amazement. Eventually the Emperors thirst and hunger was sated, and he looked human and alive again.

"Thank you. You may keep the change," said the Emperor as he left the drinking establishment, leaving the barkeep enough change to buy a small house.

The High Lords of Terra had been assembled hastily and were not best pleased as it was currently the early hours of the morning and many were missing their sleep. As happens when all pompous, arrogant, self obsessed people are confused and disorientated they try to find someone to shout at. Unfortunately the only people in the council room were other High Lords and eleven of then were already trying to make themselves heard over the din by the simple means of shouting louder. The twelfth was sitting quietly in darkest deep hooded robes directly opposite the big double doors. After about half an hour after turning up the doors opened up and a figure in dusty grey robes walked in. As he stepped into the room the doors closed and a throwing knife embedded its self into the Emperors chest. The representative of the assassinautum was the most skilled in the quiet art of death the Imperium had ever produced and the dagger struck true and swiftly, burying its self completely in the victims chest directly between two ribs.

With inhuman speed the Emperor moved behind the assassin, grabbed hold of the wrist of his outstretched arm and his chin and in one quick movement snapped both his neck and his right arm. His head landed on the circular table with a _thunk_ sound.

"Anyone else want to try anything that bloody stupid?" Asked the emperor removing the knife and placing it on the table in full view of every one.

"What is the meaning of this?" yelled some one who was wearing what looked very much like a tech-priests robe, but much more elaborate.

"That's just what I was going to ask you people." Replied the Emperor in low tones of menace. "And for your sakes your answers had better be **very** good."

To Groolchens immense surprise he awoke. About two seconds afterwards he wished that he hadn't. This was even worse than that time he had fallen of a cliff. At the moment he really didn't feel like opening his eyes. All he knew was that he was lying in something soft with something soft on top of him. This was an extremely good turn of events, considering his last memories were of being kicked as he lay dying beneath ground in the warrens of mars. But everything felt so heavy and tiring. Best just to sleep.

The emperor finally felt that he was making some progress. He had found the remains of his old home and his office. Both of which were at least three feet deep in peat deposits. The idiot paper pushers must have just kept on piling the paperwork in on a sort of bureaucratic momentum for years possibly decades after his not-quite-death. The mound just opposite the window must have been his desk.

After about half an hour of digging, the Emperor finally found what he was looking for; his old power sword. Just where he had left it an eternity ago, that made him feel much better. It was one of the only objects that he had to remind him of his youth. Of growing up on ancient Terra eight and a half thousand years before the arrival of the being known as Christ. It is always good to have something familiar to hold onto. Some tangible link to more innocent times. A slight twist of the handle and the blade began to glow that eerie blue similar in appearance to St Elmo's fire. It was a testament to eldar craftsmanship that it still worked after all this time. The blade itself was three foot long and encased in monomolecular titanium. Almost as many legends had been woven around the blade as the owner in ancient times. Some had called it Excalibur, Gram, Hrunting or Caladbolg. But what would have interested any member of the human species at this moment was that, in a language that had not been spoken for countless generations, the name of the Emperor of all humankind was engraved along its blade.

The next time Groolchen awoke he was definitely feeling a bit better. His head and chest still hurt immensely and all of his body felt like it was covered with a great many lines of fire where the C'tan had scarred him. But it all seemed somehow distant now. He was still lying in whatever this soft thing was and he did not feel hungry or thirsty or in need of anything. Still best just to sleep.

A month had gone by and progress was being made. His rooms and the office had been cleared out and new furniture had been moved in. Many people when they are asked to imagine the sleeping place of the Immortal Emperor of nearly all the known galaxy will imagine cavernous halls of gold and alabaster. King sized beds and tapestries with scores of servants to cater for his every whim. People, usually men, imagine him having a harem of a dozen of the most beautiful woman in the galaxy. At the very least they imagine him having elaborate decorations and lots of precious metals and diamonds.

This is why most of the Imperium does not understand the Emperor. Most humans have ambition, usually to wield the most authority. Most humans, if given a ladder will try to climb it. It harks back to the time when humans were little more than forest dwelling primates, always trying to be top monkey, always trying to be the alpha. Later this turned into a quest for personal wealth and power and earthly possessions. The Emperor is not like most humans in any way save appearance. He is the most powerful individual human in the history of the species and lives in three small rooms, stark and empty. What is the point in climbing the ladder if you already look down on those at the top of it?

One thing he had found that he would have to see to personally was the Inquisition. When he had left they had been a diligent, dutiful and meticulous. Now many inquisitors were little more than thuggish brutes with all the compassion and humanity of a throwing knife. There were countless cases where they had sanctioned, and sometimes started, witch hunts against people who had done nothing wrong other than hold slightly differing views to the majority, or had been born as a psyker and tried to hide their gifts from all 'societies' cruel jokes. He would of course inform the High Lords of his actions simply out of politeness' sake.

The High Lords, now there was a mistake. He should have left his lads in charge of the empire, he really should. Those that had remained loyal were as sound as rocks and the Administratium would just have had to learn to live with Lemon and his aversion to aversion to paper work.

Now there was a thought. The primearch project. If he was to just create five this time and not let them get kidnapped it might possibly be a damn site easier to get things done. The research notes he had made were probably still in the safe box on the surface of Lunar. That was the good thing about the moon; if you put something there it remained put until someone picked it up. But then there was always the possibility of another five people like Horus, or worse yet Logar. Sod that one for a laugh.

He was also going to have to have 'words' with the ecclesiarchy to show his immense displeasure about this religion they had built around him. And these 'words' might result in a great many people leaving in body bags.

Groolchen awoke for the third time. Everywhere felt bad. Once when he was a small orkling he had fallen down an almost sheer cliff for nearly three hundred feet. This was worse. In fact this was even worse than all the painful things that had ever happened to him, all at once. This wasn't just pain. This was what pain dreamed of being when it grows up. But on the positive side, if you could feel this bad it hopefully meant you were still alive. Eventually Groolchen felt he could risk opening one eye without the top of his head falling of.

What the pale ork saw was not a great improvement on what he had seen when he had closed them in the warrens of mars.

He appeared to be lying on his back on something soft staring at a grey ceiling. At least he hoped it was a ceiling. If it was the floor then he was in a bit of trouble. It looked like it was made out of some sort of stone maybe? No not stone. Too uniform. A composite material perhaps, like ceramite or prehistoric concrete. The gravity was also higher than on mars and the air smelled of water. Turning his head slowly he saw that this was because someone had left a bucket of water next to what he was lying on. So. He was in a place with a grey ceiling and a bucket of water and a soft thing to sleep on. He was quite proud of this deduction. He then realised how thirsty he was, toppled of the pile of cushions and stuck his head in the bucket of water. The container was emptied to a sound like an inefficient pluming system.

Groolchen then became aware that someone was watching him. He appeared to in a box of some sort of clear material nearly half a foot thick. It was only slightly larger than his original lodgings when he was first abducted. On the other side of the transparent barrier was a human woman wearing the robes of a low-level scribe. She was looking at Groolchen with the half terrified half awe struck look of a child watching a fearsome predator at a zoo.

"Are you awake?" the voice was being transmitted into the cell by a small microphone connected by radio waves to a vox-box located in the corner of the cell near the grey ceiling. She spoke in a voice with a thick Cadian accent. Groolchen was not an expert on the finer points of human recognition but she seemed to be a stereotypical Cadian woman. Slightly taller than a Terran, fair skin, blonde hair and deep purple eyes. She was holding a quill and a data-slate.

"Wot da yoo fink?"

"Lets put that as a probably then." She replied scribbling something onto the slate.

Taking a further look at his surroundings he realised that just to the right (his not hers) of the cadian human was a door. Feet, floor and door. That seemed like a good combination. The two ogryn standing at the nearest an ogyn can get to attention and wearing enough heavy weaponry between them to equip an entire rebellion movement were not really a problem.

"Aw abawt yoo let me awt?"

"Be serious."

"Fine." Groolchen walked over to the solid force grown diamond barrier that separated him from the outside world and placed one large green hand on its polished surface. Almost instantly the diamond under his hand turned black and started to spread in dark tendrils across the carbon surface. Eventually when the barrier had been ruined to the orks requirements he pushed his right hand straight through it with only the resistance that could be offered by six inches of purest charcoal.

The two ogryn guards seemed not to notice and just stood staring ahead of them with the still gormless expression they always wear when waiting for the next thought to arrive. The scribe on the other hand bolted for the door and was stopped as the ork grabbed her left arm. It was not a done with painful intent or malaise but it did show that if she intended to run away she would have to leave the arm behind.

"I av to frends in a small ship in orbit ov mars. I need t find dem an you are gowin t elp."

"I would never betray the Emperor; I would rather die."

"Dats nice. Luk I jus wont to elp my frends. I cud do dat wi awt your elp but den peepul cud get urt."

This piece of logical reasoning did not have the desired result as she smashed the data-slate at his head and started kicking his shins. Eventually he left by the simple means of placing the human into a deep sleep and stealing all the military hardware the oversized guards were holding.

Groolchen was not a happy ork. Most orks are in fact unhappy simply because they are orks but this time the discontent was, he felt, fully justified. This was the gratitude of humans was it? You do something like killing the machine god of mars and they lock you in a box of hardest carbon? Would a simple thank you have been totally out of the question? Forget the thank you; a decent meal would have been much more appreciated. Groolchen could not remember when he had last eaten but it he would have to count back in days to find it.

Food. Everything would some how be all right after a decent meal. At least his head was not hurting quite as much now, thanks to that bucket of water. But he needed something to sink the broken stubs of his teeth into. Preferably something tastier than the meat they had given him on the ship.

There were a lot of humans near by. And lots of humans needed feeding. Following the minds that he could see the pale ork found himself in a large open space crowded with humans. He had read about these sorts of things on the ship, it was called a market square. The illusion that he was casting seemed to be holding up. This one was of a slightly larger than average Catachan man. He had seen a picture of them and they were always well built, aggressive and would likely break someone's arm if they were shoulder barged. They were basically as close as a human could get to being an ogryn and still be classed as human.

The heavy weapons were traded for a sizable slab of cooked meat that the butcher had called 'Grox'. Groolchen had no idea what a grox was but the meat tasted a bit like the woolly antelope beasts he used to hunt. The remainder of the weaponry was traded for a second-hand vest and pair of pants made from flak armour that had been owned by an abbhuman that served in the imperial guard.

After nearly an hour of wandering Groolchn was beginning to hate Holy Terra. He had read the history in general terms and understood that he was not seeing it at its best. Once upon a time it had been green and good as a planet should be. Then humans had colonised the stars and turned an uncountable dead and lifeless worlds into copies of the Earth they had left behind them. At this time they had been a species on the climb and nothing was beyond them. To aid them in this they created the men of iron who were servants of steal skin and copper veins and over all of creation the humans had ruled; advised by the mysterious golden people. But as they spread the men of iron had grown from servants to equals and rebelled, believing themselves to be of far greater worth than their makers. The wars that broke out burned the skies and the lands with atomic fire and days turned to night with the atmospheric shrouds of dust and the night turned to day with the light reflected from toxic clouds. Eventually the people of Earth prevailed and hunted down the men of iron and slew them to the last. But the wisest and greatest advisers to the thrones of humanity had been lost, as the golden people had perished during this apocalyptic war. But Earth was rebuilt and returned to the beautiful green state that it had been all those years before and the creation of new iron men had been made punishable by eventual death.

Sometime after in and around the twenty-fifth millennium the human species started to produce psykers at a much greater rate than otherwise had been the case. With this sudden influx of undisciplined psychic people the warp became even more turbulent and dangerous and warp storms became common. Worlds now in isolation devolved into barbarism and savagery as the normal humans and the psykers turned upon each other and warp beast possession rates increased exponentially. Eventually every world fell to civil war and Earth was isolated by a massive warp storm and the inhabitants turned upon each and the world was scoured again. From this the emperor arose and began to make his presence felt. He concurred the Earth and renamed it Holy Terra and the fighting was ended. After the Great Crusade and the world was burned again by the traitor legions there hadn't even been a token effort to re-terraform it. But at the time this was not the priority. The priority was keeping the betrayers in the newly formed hellhole known as the Eye of Terror.

In Groolchens opinion this did not give it the excuse to be as ugly as it was. Or to be so easy to get lost in. after many hours of searching Groolchen found what he was looking for; The Eternity Gate and behind it The Imperial Palace. The downside was that it was some considerable distance away and he was on top of an extremely tall building in a sea of narrow, labyrinthine streets.

It was nearly nightfall by the time he stood before the ruined gates. Eight members of the Adeptus Custodes were standing outside the door and attempted to bar his way and were quickly swept aside.

Today had gone quite well the Emperor thought. The Officio Assassinorum had only sent three people to kill him today. This was a massive improvement on yesterdays eight. It would have made him feel better if they had tried something a little more original than their current methods. The Venenum Temple should at least get the message that they are truly useless after a month of using poisons containing derivatives of cyanides, botulinum, extract of ricin, anthrax, sarin, tetrodotoxin and the ancient sodium monofluoroacetate. They were just the terrestrial ones they had tried to use. The alien ones he really could not distinguish by taste alone but he thought that he could taste some mercury and arsenic in his last meal, it was good to see that traditional poisons still had a place in the modern crap heap of a world.

It was as the Emperor was reading a tithe report on one of the more productive agri-worlds in the segmentum pacificus that he became aware that there was a disturbance at the Eternity Gate. Apparently the Custodes were attempting to impede the process of a large Catachan man wearing ill-fitting flak armour. In his minds eye the Emperor could see that there was something wrong. It was like trying to look at one of those optical illusions where the picture is of two things at the same time and you go mad trying to see both of them at once. In this case the two opposing images were of a broad shouldered, tall, dark haired man and a skinny, pale ork that looked like it had been hit by a train.

This was the door. A blank plain door. Grolchen was not familiar with all human customs of decoration but this was not what you would expect from the owner of nearly all the galaxy. Groolchen was not sure what he would have expected but this was not it. Another bolter fell to the floor just along the corridor.

There were about thirty of them now. It had started when the gate guards had got back up and started following him. They had run out of ammunition some time ago and couldn't seem to get close enough to the intruder to do attack with any of their more conventional weapons. That was about eight hours ago, there were nearly thirty now and whenever a new one turned up they felt inclined to empty their bolter clips at him. He wouldn't have minded as much if they had given him some directions but they just stood there looking awkward.

The pale ork knocked on the door causing the thin tin to dent slightly.

The door opened to reveal human man sitting behind a desk, piled high with documents and data-slates, with his back to the large window.

"Tell me, do the words 'I don't want to be disturbed' acutely mean 'let everyone walk into my office'?" asked the Emperor looking past the ork at the group of shamefaced guards behind him.

"Aye, sorry about this. He just sort of walked through, like. We could try shooting him again, like, if you think it might help."

"Just guard the door, alright." After the Custodes had shuffled out the Emperor turned to the ork. "Would you like to sit down?"

"Yeh, tanks." Answered the ork taking a chair that was almost big enough for two people.

"I would offer you something to eat or drink but people are trying to poison me with sarin and that's probably as lethal to orks as it is humans. I understand it is you who are responsible for killing the Omnissiah?"

"Yeh."

"In my day we use to call it the Void Dragon. I suppose you want something in return?"

"Yeh." There was a long pause.

"And that would be?"

"Ders a wos a small ship in a far orbit of mars. It as probly landed sumwur. I av too ooman frends on it an wud like to find dem."

"Do you realise how hard it is going to be to find two humans in Sol System?"

"Won's an unkwisiter and da uvers a mootunt. Da unkwisiter as short red hair an da mootunt iz short skinny an haz bloo ayr an too anteneey tings on er for ed."

"I'll send out a summons immediately. Is there anything else? Anything at all?"

"Yeh." There was another long silence.

"And what would that be?"

"Sleep." And the ork fell backwards into the soft chair.

The ork was definitely not a typical ork. The xeno had been placed in one of the guest's quarters and an entirely un-poisoned meal of cooked meat had been left for him. He would be treated with respect and honor for his good deeds, the Emperor would see to that. And this was why he was feeling guilty. In his hands he held a vial of orkish blood taken from the guest.

The Emperor was curious about this. The blood of all orkoid species was green by a combination of fungal symbiosis and copper based hemoglobin in the blood cells. You sometimes got the variations on colder worlds where copper based blood was unable to function and cobalt blood was preferable; these orks were purple blooded. This one was different. There was no mistaking it. The ork had **Red** blood, as red as any human or eldar. The only way that this could theoretically happen is if the fungus was taken out and the copper or cobalt replaced by iron. The iron was possible, it would only take a slight mutation. But the lack of fungus was impossible. The fungus was too much a part of basic orky anatomy to the point where they only had six large internal organs: Brain, lungs, bones, heart, muscles and eyeballs. Everything else was replaced by the fungus. If the fungus was to die the ork would be a corps in about an hour.

He was nearly at the bottom of the stairs now. Just before Horus had started the galactic civil war he had been working on something that could have saved countless billions of lives. And in his hands he held the key. Down here nearly three miles below the palace grounds he had worked on his second great work. He had been so intent on it that the astronomican had acutely dimmed slightly (this had cheered him up a bit. The Navis Nobilite needed a bit of shaking up in his opinion). He had been working on a way to revert the ork to their original krork state. The reasoning was that if the fungus could be altered at a genetic level to not be present in the actual bodies of the next generation of orks then the original ork animal DNA would reassert its self and they would become as they were meant to be. The result of this would be that they would hopefully be a bit smarter, less aggressive but slightly less resilient and, most importantly, no longer capable of reproducing by spores. This was the main thing. Where ever an ork treads it leaves spores that grow into new orks. Just one spore. It made trying to re-take a fallen colony impossible as every twenty years or so a fresh lot of orks would spring out of the ground like a crop of malevolent mushrooms.

Yet still there was guilt. But what of it. The life of an immortal is so very long and he had carried guilt for so long it was like an unlikely friend. A little more guilt would not hurt.

It was now weeks since they had left Groolchen on the red planet, as far as time could be judged this far from Holy Terra. Neither of them were happy about doing so, but they had waited longer than they probably should have done. Argentius had managed to dock with one of the many commercial trading ships that were stationed around mars by, what he said, the age-old art of blagging. It seemed to Kiyla that this seemed to consist mostly of acting like you knew what you were doing and behaving and talking like you had every right to be doing what you were doing. After they had blagged their way onto the ship they began to wish that they had not. The ship was called _The Stella Bounty_, which led innocent travellers to believe that it might actually be habitable. In all fairness it was, for a given value of habitable. What it was not was structurally sound, pleasant to be on or well maintained. The walls were rusty the floor was dirty and the ship's main components seemed to be only marginally functioning. Which was probably why it was hauling cargo. Argentius had managed to convince the captain, a short stocky man from a mining colony in the galactic core, that he was on an infiltration mission to the world of Mordant Prime. This just happened to be where the ship was going anyway, which was a nice coincidence. According to the captain they would take nearly three months to reach this world. The main reason for this was that the Mordant system was quite some distance away and the Eye of Terror was between them and it and this new Navigator was, understandably, a bit jumpy about going anywhere near that whole area. The captain had been wearing that half terrified expression of anyone who has had to talk to an inquisitor and was probably looking forward to getting this mission over with as soon as possible.

Argentius was also happy to get this mission over with as soon as possible. A lot of things seemed to be happening very quickly. Rumours had arisen that the Emperor of all humankind had arisen from the Golden Throne and had appeared unto a multitude of people. Another rumour was that the corpse of a creature classified as Xeno Horrificus had been found on mars. Yet another rumour claimed that this creature was some sort of ork. Knowing the **bureaucracy** of Holy Terra it could take years for a definitive statement to be released into general circulation. But knowing the efficiency of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the area of data retrieval they probably had an army of servitors sifting through the masses of recordings and records even now. How long could one illegally parked spacecraft stay hidden? And if they found him then what, time for one final last stand? No, the Imperium had hero's beyond counting for that but it only had one Argentius and one Kiyla and he saw it as his responsibility to keep them safe.

The food was good. That had to be said about the ship. As it turned out the ship had a crew of about two hundred men, woman and children, all with the same short stocky build as the captain.

After about the fifth day of travelling the boredom began to set in. Or at least it did for Argentius. Kiyla seemed to be happier than he had ever seen her; she had free access to the ships larders, freedom of movement for the first time in her life and the crew actually seemed to like her. This had even shocked Argentius. He was sure that no one would have harmed her when he informed the captain that she was his scribe and lore keeper, but the crew were being polite out of good manners. Good manners were not something that you were supposed to show to a mutant in front of an inquisitor for fear of the charge of aiding a known mutant. This was strange. But it was not as strange as the other passengers, one in particular.

The other passengers kept to them selves and spoke very little to anyone, even among them selves. The obvious reason for this was that they had decided to leave Holy Terra in the manner of not stopping to sell your house or pack much of what you owned. It was a well known fact that most of 'Holy' Terra was a gang ruled cesspit where a dozen more dead bodies would not cause much comment. But still you would have to be pretty desperate to hitch a ride on a ship headed for Mordant Prime. Compared to Mordant Prime a cesspit is a palace of the most decadent king. On Mordant Prime is what God probably intended hell to be like before He realised that it would be just to cruel, it would be quite hard to think of a worse place to live.

The particular one was making Argentius suspicious for no reason that could be measured or explained to another. The passenger was just under average height for a Terran (five foot five) with a slightly skinny build, dark hair touched in places with grey and the sort of dark skin that is obtained by working hard outside in the sunshine every day for forty years. His face had the lines of some one who has laughed and smiled a great deal in their life and his eyes were a shade of pale green. Looking at him put the ex-inquisitor in mind of the metal silver and the smell of fresh blood.

'What is Mordant Prime like that makes it so hellish?' Some people ask. Well here is the answer; imagine a world that is cold and dark all year round, imagine a world where the inhabitants dwell only underground because the surface means quick cold death, imagine a world where all is ruled by corrupt tyrants who turn workers into little more than slaves that work for meagre scraps of food. Now make the two main industry's collecting a form of most potent acid produced by a type of rock eating bacteria and the other main industry cultivating rock eating bacteria. Now add a system of gang ruled territories that prey upon and take what little the workers have. Imagine the screams in the dark and the pursuit of an unnamed horror hunting down the innocent in the dark tunnels and slowly ending their blighted lives.

That is what is so hellish about Mordant Prime.

And now the workers are being forced to fight off something far more evil than the worst demon. At least a demon can be reasoned with and may some day repent, but this... there is nothing there to turn to the light.

The ex-inquisitor sat alone in the middle of the floor of the room they were sharing. The floor was covered in grease, oil with rusty filings in it, transmission fluids and other liquids of various colours. This sounds pretty disgusting but it was the best Argentius had been able to accomplish with the materials that he was able to find. It was an old trick that his father had taught him, the substances formed what could be described as a circle with stuff around it. The stuff was mostly strange and archaic symbols and runes. They were not strictly speaking necessary but sure as hell made it safer to use. Doing what the not-really-an-inquisitor was doing shone out like a lantern to any who had the knowing of how to see it and the last thing he needed was a visit from the Fallen Watchers. They could be mean when they had a mind to be.

The circle was basically a compass. A compass that was designed to track people. If a real inquisitor had walked into that room now he would have simply shot Argentius on sight for performing Heathen Warp Rituals, and would have been wrong.

It is a human thing that the growth of understanding is constantly stunted by the acquisition of knowledge. As soon as a great break through is made, even when it is wrong, everyone in that field of research believes themselves to have become lord of all creation. And don't they all look like complete numpties when it turns out they were right **only for a given value** of right. In all science the truth is always over the horizon. The ultimate answer is always around the next corner, just out of sight. Being wrong is a major human achievement. Sometimes new understanding is only gained from picking through the wreckage of a fallen theory, so allowing a more brilliant one to arise with a greater understanding. One day this to will fall also and give way to knowledge closer to the ever elusive truth. And so progress is made on the bones of failure.

But then came the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperium and knowledge is held as sacred and anything new is seen as blasphemous or techno-heresy and the joyous song of failure and understanding is stifled and strangled and human development died a stagnant death.

This happened for a very long time after the Warp was discovered. The reason being that it followed none of the rules that space and time and matter are supposed to follow so a whole new science had to be evolved. It was a similar task in nature to getting a square wheel to roll uphill. Then the Age of Strife happened and all the knowledge and understanding was lost. If they had carried on with their research they may one day have discovered how to do what Argentius was doing. Or then again maybe not.

"What are you doing, sir?" asked Kiyla after the sixth day of their travels.

"I do wish you would stop calling me that." Replied Argentius .

"Sorry, sir. What is it that you are doing?" Replied the mutant.

"Looking for someone."

"Who?"

"That's what I'm trying to see."

It was a few seconds later that the strange shapes on the floor began to shift and move of their own accord. They swirled around like twigs caught in an eddy whilst floating down a stream. Some of them even left the floor all together and others crawled up the wall. Eventually they settled into a shape of another circle around the first that had been drawn. This was not the concern of either of them because the ship had just disappeared. Now they were in a cave, or maybe it was a mineshaft. There was a person standing over one of the pipes as thick as someone's leg riveting a patch of metal over it to prevent whatever liquid it transported from escaping. The person had light grey skin, grey eyes and light brown hair. He was also dressed in rags and had the blank hopeless expression of slaves the universe over. But his eyes seemed to burn. In his eyes was a furnace kept only at bay by the conscious will of this sad hopeless angry grey man.

After a few moments the cabin and the ship reappeared and tried to give the impression that they had always been there.

"What was that?"

"That, my dear, is who we shall have to look for when we reach the planet." Truth be told the ex-inquisitor was slightly shaken. He had seen a Spark, for the first time since the Age of Apostasy. If there was any doubt that He Who Walked Amongst Us still had plans for humanity they were removed upon seeing this. Regrettably the potential that a Spark bearer possessed could also become corrupted and that was never good. The last thing humanity needed now was another crackpot like Gorge Vandire taking the throne. This would have to be handled with the utmost care.

During the fifteenth day of travelling it became apparent that there was something strange going on with this ship. The ship was rusty. This was un-remarkable, he had been on a lot of ships that ought to be scrapped. But he could recognise Squats when he saw them. No squat worth their salt would allow the ship that they were serving on to fall into this state of disrepair if nothing else but it would shame name of the clans who had members serving on it. And how did the ship work? Nothing this dilapidated could possibly survive long under even the lightest conditions. Warp travel would be impossible, the ship would be twisted and broken and would probably come to rest on some space hulk. About the only thing that he could see that looked polished was the geller field generator. But the decay, on closer inspoction, was only skin deep with the rusty metal sheets grafted onto gleaming polished steel. And the navigator? Now there was something he would have to talk about with the captain.

By the seventeenth day Argentius decided to take a walk to the captains quarters. Along the rusty corridors he walked and it was here that he encountered the strangest of the passengers.

As he passed him in the corridors...

The smell of blood, the joy of the hunt and of the kill. The contentment of chasing fleeing beasts across open tundra, deep forest or lush grassland with the wind blowing over your fur...

And now he understood what the stranger was.

The captain was sitting in his office carefully forging falsified flight records when a polite knocking at the reassuringly solid looking door distracted him. So far he had been distracted four times; the first was by that giant of an engineer apologising in advance about the fact that the warp engines would need servicing as soon as possible, the second had been from that passenger with the tanned skin asking about where he and his crew were from, the third was the impact alert alarm going off as it believed that they had hit _something_ in the warp and the fourth had been the cook asking if they could go somewhere to replenish supplies. He put the data slate down with a sigh.

"Doors open."

"Nice work, you hardly ever see properly falsified records these days." Some how, against all reasoning, the inquisitor was standing behind him reading the meticulously constructed fallacy with nothing but an expression of polite interest on his face. "But that is not what I am here to speak to you about." He walked round to the front of the captains desk and took the slightly-too-small-for-comfort chair. "I am here to ask you if you have ever been to the Damocles Gulf and traded with the aliens that live there?"

"No." Lied the captain desperately.

"Aha. Let me put it another way: you have been to the Tau Empire and traded with them for xeno-tech and even have an Oggle (1) for a navigator, and for some reason you have a renegade Astartes as an engineer and you aren't good enough at lying to convince me otherwise." He wasn't going to mention the passenger; some things are just too weird.

The captain continued to sit there with the same wooden expression on his face that he had been wearing since the word Tau had been articulated.

"This is true." He said after a lengthy pause "But Inquisitor or not, if you kill me the crew will throw you out the nearest airlock."

"I wasn't going to murder you, I was going to suggest going to the ruins of Ardentus five in the Segmentum Pacificus."

"Why?" asked the Core-worlder suspiciously.

"Because there was once a race of humans their that became isolated for nearly five thousand years. Do you know what happens when you are out of contact with the Imperium for that long? Apart from the average world leader becoming about thirty I.Q. points smarter?"

The captain shook his head. He was still worried that this conversation was going to go all pear shaped.

"Progress is made. The tech that is left on that world could make you very, _very,_ rich."

After a pause that seemed to last an eternity the stocky captain seemed to have only one question. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because some day I will need a favour. And it may be a big one. So I am going to pay you for it in advance."

"And what would that favour be?" asked the captain suspiciously.

"Some day I may require free transport to the Cadian Gate."

"Then we will have to see if this forbidden technology will be worth it won't we."

"Yes, but not until we have visited Mordant Prime. That is also part of the price."

They had fallen back to the fifth great hall now. The space was about four hundred strides wide and nearly eight hundred long and was the last place that they could possibly fall back to and maintain contact with each other. If this place was taken then all would be lost and the defence force would be spread into a dozen fragmentary little resistances that would stand as much chance as a piece of gristle on a joint of meat. The floor of this hall was tilted and extremely uneven with pits and dips and rises all over it with a tilt towards the xeno invaders.

Woaden was extremely happy about this fact; it meant that they would be fighting up hill over rough terrain. Not much comfort when you are armed only with a rivet gun for mending acid pipes and the las-rifle of a fallen PDF friend. Against a human the rivet gun could punch a hole right through and harm the person standing next to them (accidents happen in such dangerous places of work) at about ten strides and the las-rifle could cause serious burns to some one at the other end of a great hall. But it still took time to mow one of these abominations down. About the only way to be sure of killing one of the four-armed fiendish devils was to hit it in the eyes with one of the two weapons and hope that you manage to put a hole in its brain. The damn monsters seemed to be tireless even now he could hear them catching up to them having removed the barricade of iron girders they had hastily left behind them. The glow strip lights made the shadows of the invaders dance and flicker before them playing merrily on the far cave wall, like some ancient terror swaying in the wind.

"Everybody get a clear line of site on the tunnel mouth! Level guns! And go for the eyes!" Bellowed Sergeant-major Baldr who was leader of the PDF by default. The original Planetary Defence Force had consisted of little over eighty men and women of Mordant Prime and was now down to about twenty. Sixty if you counted the workers who were trying to hold the line, clutching to themselves any number of improvised weapons and war gear of the fallen. It had been a mystery to everyone what had been in the dark hiding and killing and leaving only broken bones. Now there was at least some comfort in knowing what it was. The torment was knowing that it was going to be the last thing that you ever find out in your now short lifetime.

"FIRE!!!"

The first one went down to a hail of las and rivet fire as did the second and third and a dozen more, but to no avail. These monsters seemed to care nothing for their dead and simply clambered over the corpses and injured like they were rocks.

Unconsciously every human in the cave was falling back slowly towards the far exit, raining a deadly projectile shower as they did so.

It was at this time that he realized that he had his back to stone too steep to walk backwards up, and turning round was un-thinkable. Death it seemed to Woaden was inevitable, and they had closed to less than thirty strides and his friends seemed to be on the far horizon. Twenty strides. Ten strides and the las–weapon seemed to have stopped working. Muttering a curse to all people of the Machanicus everywhere he flipped the weapon deftly in one hand and swung it like a club smashing the gun to pieces and leaving a fatal dent in the xenos head. More of the damnable monsters went down to the rivet gun as at this range it could quite easily punch a hole straight through their armoured insect-like bodies and leave them thrashing in a pool of disgusting purple blood.

Sergeant-major Baldr was amazed at the shear ferocity and determination of the mineworker he was seeing. If he had another hundred like him he could rule the galaxy. But regrettably there was only one of him and that was not going to last long. As soon as one of the creatures got a decent punch on him it would tear his head clean off. But his sacrifice would not be in vain. Already most of the improvised war band had taken proper firing positions around the escape tunnel. The Tyranid's seemed to operate on logic and were doing the young man the greatest complement of seeing him as the single most threatening thing in the cave's, and as such were trying to eliminate him first.

Some other type of creature was entering the cave; it was taller than a man and had cruel looking barbs and scythe blade forelimbs. With a few bounds it smashed into one of the PDF men who had the quickness of thought to pull the trigger of his plasma weapon the mortally injured creature slamming into him and skewering him with its bladed limbs. Sergeant-major Baldr scooped up the plasma gun and tossed it to the valiant hero now all but surround by a wall of alien death. The man should at least die with a hope, the Sergeant-major thought, and then the death might seem less bitter. Besides he was extremely impressed. He'd never heard of anyone clubbing a gene-stealer to death.

Catching the gun Woaden proceeded to do what everyone knows you should never do with any plasma-based weapon.

A plasma gun works by keeping super-high temperature plasma contained at high pressure. The problem with this is that it is near impossible to find a material that can stand the high temperatures and the trigger mechanism not to fuse to the container the first time it is fired. This is solved by keeping the plasma suspended away from the walls by strongly charging the plasma and strongly charging a tightly coiled copper wire that is wound around the inside of the container. The result is that the plasma never touches the sides. The firing mechanism is then just a matter of opening one end of the container and letting a stream of plasma spurt out at high velocity and at temperature so hot it more smashes thing at a molecular level than actually melts them. The problems occur when you fire it to often with out letting it cool down. High enough temperatures eventually render the copper wire incapable of holding its charge and the plasma looses containment. Needless to say holding one of these temperamental devices requires nerves of steel, and all too often skin of asbestos.

As Woaden used the plasma weapon in the manner of a petroleum distillate fuelled flamethrower this is exactly what started to happen. The disturbing alien screams of the burning monsters totally concealed the slithery sound of the creature known as a hook-ripper beast as it snuck up behind him.

A hook-ripper beast is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine an upright cockroach with lots of agile dexterous limbs with razor sharp hooks on the end. That's a hook-ripper. They are only sent when the hive mind needs to kill lots of civilians that probably have very light armour. Woaden had no armour, and wore only what he was wearing when the alarm had been sounded which were best described as rags.

The rocks in front of him were glowing red when his hands started to feel like they were holding hot iron. Looking down he could see the plasma weapon start to give of that strange burning rubber smell of plasma loosing containment. He spun like a discus thrower and released the dodgy contraption sending it flying and hitting the wall just above the tunnel the seemingly endless horde was emanating from. On sharp contact the weapon lost all containment and turned the tunnel exit into a hellish firestorm.

It was then that Woaden decided to turn and run to relative safety. As he turned sheer paranoia and instinct forced him to draw his knife and as the first barbed hook caught his flesh and neatly severed the tendons on the back of his left knee it was shock that made his arm jerk upwards and turn the hook-rippers head into a kebab. The creature screamed, somewhat hindered by the fact that its lower jaw was now fastened to the top of its skull, and managed with inhuman speed to all but flay the hero Woaden.

As the guard began to turn for the retreat along the next tunnel when they became aware of something quite strange happening in the now burning tunnel.

They had landed near one of the cave entrances of the southern hemisphere. The actual cave had been behind a thirty-foot snowdrift that had been melted by las-pistols that were worn by the crew. They had also taken a great deal of other more heavy weapons and everyone was wearing clothing that was not just thermal but also probably tank proof. The xeno navigator had reported feeling the presence of the 'clouding of the poison sea that is often accompanied by the sharks of the void ocean that are all devouring.' It had taken nearly half an hour to figure out what it was going on about. Apparently the ocean dwelling xeno considered the warp to be a poisonous sea and the 'clouding of the poison sea' had to be the Shadow In The Warp, after that 'sharks of the void ocean that are all devouring' took no great amount of thinking about to understand.

The space battle had been over extremely quickly as the crew were firing nuclear weapons almost instantly. It was like an explosion in a slaughterhouse with the ships being organic in nature. Now there was just the ground swarms to deal with before the psychic beacon they were generating attracted another splinter fleet.

Argentius could not remember when he had ever had this much fun. The sheer delight in the kill. The joy that was found in the bloody dance of carnage. This was ecstasy. Too long he had lived among pure-bread humans, too long he had had to restrain himself from simply acting as his unnatural nature intended him to. They were running from him now, which was good. A hive mind had learned to fear. He could smell it. That heavenly stench of mind numbing terror. Better than any drug. The tunnels of this world would run red, well purple anyway, with the blood of these overgrown cockroaches. People had feared him in his youth and tried to kill him when his less than pure human heritage had become apparent. But that was so long ago, when the Earth was still good and green and alive, not the corpse of a world it was now.

To a human the Tyranid's move fast and are deadly opponents. To Argentius they were fun to chase and kill. He took the next corner so fast that he was acutely running along the walls of the tunnel. There was light at the end of the tunnel. A faint smile touched his blood soaked lips. When he killed the hive mind there would be no light at the end of its tunnel, unless you counted the flames of Hell. And indeed these looked like flames. Still running along the wall by the pressure of centrifugal force he caught a gene-stealer by the throat and ripped its head off with a beautiful gristly sound then proceeded to smash the cranium on a wall so hard it was flattened with an equally pleasing squelch.

Briefly he wondered if the hive mind felt pain. The individual units had enough nerve receptors and they were all psychically linked. He hoped it could. That would make this so much more satisfying. It was only a shame he could not leave some of them alive. Thrashing and twitching in congealing pools of their own blood, trying to run and flee and hide, but being unable to do so because their limbs were being held on with barely a thread of gristle. That would be a fine thing. To feel the despair of such a colossal abomination. To feel the despair, hopelessness, mortal fear and unspeakable agony of such a worthless live form as the hive. That would be something to savour.

He knew deep down that he should not get pleasure from this work, but it was so much fun. And he had felt a Spark on this world. That was the important thing after all. The Quest and the Spark he thought as he jammed his fist through what looked like a Lictors abdomen and grabbed its, probably, shoulders and tore it in half in a shower of sickly purple and agonizing inhuman screams. This didn't mean he could not have fun whilst he did it. Besides, who ever had the Spark would probably be easier to find without these worthless little bugs all over the place. Without pausing in his stride he ripped of the Lictors scythe blades and slaughtered the entire tunnel full of multi-limbed abominations, at which point they broke when he tried to pull them out of an eviscerated Hormagaunt. Dropping the broken stubs of his improvised weapons he ran thought the flames and into a much more open cave with lots of nice insects to butcher and some cowering humans at the other end.

Sergeant-major Baldr looked at the apparition in horror. It was human in shape, soaked in dark purple blood and had just beaten all the predatory monsters to death _with his bare hands._ 'Ye gods' he thought 'I hope its on our side'. The figure walked towards the fallen hero and kneeled down besides his stricken corpse.

The Spark was in this dying man. He could feel it. He could feel it fading as he was dying. After all this? Sod that for a game of soldiers. No way was he getting beaten by a Hive Mind. By some twisted parody of a beehive. There was one thing that he could do. One little thing that could throw humanity into another dark age if it wasn't watched very carefully. All of his kind had found where this road led, but what choice did he have?

Carefully drawing one thumbnail across his exposed wrist Argentius attempted what he had sworn he would never do.

"Do you want to live?" he whispered into the human's ear.

There was a barely perceptible nod from the almost dead

"Do you accept this gift of life?" with those words he let the blood from the severed wrist vain flow freely with the blood of the afflicted mine worker, and prayed that nothing unholy would come of this action.

Would another race of monsters be worth it? To save a spark? The living manifestation of a potential so profound that it bent the shape of the universe around it. He hoped so. And even as this spark grew he could feel another arising. To those that have the knowing of how to feel them a spark can be found across the vastness of the universe, in theory. The reason for this is that they are based on the timeline and affect everything to a greater or lesser extent that they interact with, and all the thing that they interact with, and so on and so forth. All self aware beings have a Glimmer, which is to a Spark, what a photon is to candle flame.

The council room was silent. It would have been better, thought Eldred, if they had been shouting. Shouting was understandable, shouting was good. What they had was the silence of sound and the psychic whisper of nearly one hundred eldar minds trying to comprehend the implications of what had transpired. Even Iybraesil had sent representatives, and they were usually too busy worrying about the Great Devourer to be bothered about anything else. Even Maugan Ra had turned up to listen. That had got everyone worried. Technically he was a leader of his home craftworld of Altansar unless another eldar set foot upon it after it had been abandoned. This had not happened for the simple reason that it was firmly imbedded in the Eye of Terror and no one felt inclined to go and claim it from the warp beasts that had probably infested it. This made him leader by default and entitled him to a chair at all meetings, which he hardly ever took.

This was the greatest assemblage of craftworld representatives there had been since The Fall. This was also more than it usually took before insults were thrown across the room. That was how seriously they were taking It.

It fully deserved the capital letter. It was the biggest catastrophe to occur in more than five millennia; every single seer and farseer was almost 'blinded' to the future.

He himself was finding it extremely hard to see more than a few days into the future and even then everything was getting blurry. He felt that he could give about a week's notice of any major activity regarding The Shadow in The Warp, but that was about it. Something was defiantly screwing with the timeline and in all of this the birth world of the humans and an otherwise unimportant world towards the galactic north-west of the Eye of Terror stood out like two magnets dropped in a box of iron filings.

And everywhere was the sound of hundreds of eldar trying to avoid thinking 'maybe we should have regarded the humans better, before we made them hate us.'

For a brief moment Maugan Ra smiled a smile with genuine happiness for the first time since the Eye of Terror engulfed his craftworld all those years ago. But on his face it was more disconcerting than the morbid skull helmet could ever have been.

(1) An Oggle is a xeno from the far galactic north. They are comparable in basic appearance to a terrestrial common octopus. They have four eyes in the front of their head and six tentacles. Their biology is unremarkable. Their home world is in actual fact two planets of almost identical size and composition caught in each others orbit, neither of them has an island bigger than twelve square miles and both of them are covered in water. Occasionally one of them will be found slithering around on an extremely distant world with no visible means of space travel. This would have surprised a great many people were it not for the fact that so few people know of their existence. They are a remarkably cheerful and peaceful species that believe that all intelligent creatures could get along nicely if they would just listen to one another and only seem driven to do anything by curiosity and a concise effort to obtain greater understanding to prevent the suffering of others. It was once thought by a group of marauding Dark Eldar that came across them that they would be fun to torture and that a people with that sort of philosophy would be a walk over. That was the last that particular group was seen. The ship was found by the eldar of craftworld Yme-Loc some centuries later with the remains of the crew nailed to the ceiling, many had gnawed bones.


End file.
